I did a 60-hour silent retreat in my own flat – lockdown has never felt so good

For the first time in nearly a year, I didn’t see or hear the word “Covid” for a whole weekend. I didn’t have to transport myself to a remote private island or travel to Mars; I was merely taking a few days offline for a self-guided silent meditation retreat in my flat.

I turned my phone – and myself – onto silent for 60 hours. It transpires, perversely, that the best response to being stuck at home quietly is to spend even more time at home and to get even quieter.

Those of you new to meditation marathons might reasonably wonder what mine actually involved. In short: sitting, sitting and more sitting to a soundtrack of silence, silence and sirens (thanks to my flat’s proximity to a major arterial road).

On the first morning, there was a forceful flurry of thoughts about almost everything: dough balls, business conundrums and my favourite “dogfluencer” Puggy Smalls. I wondered whether this would be a worthwhile weekend after all. The reassuring voice of Tara Brach, whose free guided sessions I had downloaded in advance, brought me back to the moment, gently encouraging me to sit like a mountain.

Ever so slowly, these thoughts subsided, the gaps between them slowly lengthening. Proper peace, a particularly precious commodity in these turbulent times, almost snuck up on me, simply from taking time to sit still. And as the weekend went on, this deepened as I soaked in the silence.

There were moments that proved all too literally a pain in the backside – the natural consequence of sitting in the same position for eight hours a day. But even these became bearable and overall it was a blissful break, the perfect pandemic pause, sorely needed in these draining times.

I noticed the effects everywhere. My simple soups, bought beforehand in a final supermarket sweep, tasted like Michelin-starred menus. I was more aware of all around me, picking up on things I’d normally miss, including the surprising squawk of a very lost seagull. My lunch break walks in my block’s shared back garden felt like an immersive jungle tour since they were my only outside outing. And I found myself more in touch with what was happening inside myself, at a time when I’ve found that harder and harder to hear over the volume of the outside noise.

The longer this pandemic and resultant lockdowns continue, it’s only natural that we are all frantically searching for things to do. I realised, however, that there was one thing I was really resisting doing: nothing.

In my mind, having last completed a retreat a year ago, I had told myself that I would do another the next time the rules allowed a getaway stay. I pictured myself soaking up countryside karma and village vibes, while meditating on cottage cushions. But the regulations repeatedly forbidding this had become a convenient and convincing excuse.

In actual fact, to retreat in the space I have spent so much time these last 10 months made it more powerful, not less. And it’s amazing how a couple of candles can transform your living room from Work From Home to Wonder Filled Hermitage.

The schedule, the first I had written out on a piece of paper since my GCSE revision plan in 2008, more than sufficed for giving the weekend some structure, despite being devised in minimal minutes. Striking a balance between maximising meditation and adequate breaks, I also split my meditation sessions between guided and unguided, opting for a 50/50 mix. For the guided sessions, I’d chosen Tara Brach’s from the plentiful free resources available online, knowing that her focus on self-compassion and penchant for bar jokes in her evening talks would be an ideal tonic for the times.

In many ways, this has been a pandemic of space constraint. The space we have to keep between ourselves and others, which spaces we’re allowed in, who we’re allowed to share space with. One of the most challenging aspects of people’s personal path through this situation has been creating any space between the activities, which all blur into one, between themselves and the news, between their increasingly ferocious thoughts and feelings.

I was taken aback by how much more spacious I felt throughout the next week after a retreat of only two days. To give yourself time to disconnect from your devices and reconnect with yourself is to cash a gift voucher at the spa of space. And this is the greatest gift to self you can give, especially now.

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