Structure Mindfulness Retreats for Both New and Experienced Meditators
21:53 Share

Welcome to the Mindfulness Exercises podcast, your space to deepen your presence, elevate your mindfulness teaching, and embody mindfulness with confidence, authenticity, and integrity. Join us as we explore insights and tools to transform lives, including your own.

Welcome to the Mindfulness Exercises podcast. My name is Sean Fargo, and today's episode is a really special one. It's drawn from a retreat that we hosted a few years ago, where we invited participants from all around the world to come together to deepen their experiential understanding of mindfulness by sitting for several days all day and

in silent meditation together. During this retreat, we really deepened our practice and grew a lot by meeting each moment with this gentle awareness, meeting the joys and the bliss of a retreat, as well as the challenges that inevitably come up. During this retreat, someone asked a thought-provoking question related to how

The structure of a retreat relates to the participant's experience of mindfulness. So in this episode, I'll explore this topic and this question of retreat structure relating to the participant's experience of mindfulness, where I offer insights on how to tailor mindfulness practices to

for beginners, as well as people who have a lot of experience under their belt, for people who are new to a retreat or whether they've done lots of retreats in the past. So without further ado, let's dive into this question.

When we think about structure, and you know, as we've talked about how much how much do we load it up or leave it organic? Does the experience of the participant matter?

So I'm thinking like if I said this was an introductory retreat, you don't need to have any meditation experience. And then I come and it's like, okay, just sit here. I wonder whether that would be to people need, would they need some guidance at a beginning retreat or any thoughts on that? Like the type of audience you have? Like how much does the previous experience matter? Yeah.

Yeah, like if I had an introductory retreat, day-long retreat, and said no experience with meditation required, would you have a different kind of structure versus experienced practitioners only who are accustomed to just sitting? Well, thank you for the question. I think it's an important question. In the case of

say for that example of like just sitting and there's new practitioners or new people interested in the practice, whatever they think the practice is. I think that just a few sentences, a few basic sentences would be necessary, but it doesn't need to be more than a few sentences. It can be a lot more, but I think if

You know, like if there's like a whiteboard or a piece of paper or something that outlines something so people can refer back to it or like a bulletin board where you just write out like what we're doing. Gentle awareness of what's happening. If things get too overwhelming, please respond.

you know, let me know or back off or bring awareness to something that feels safe. Noticing judgments as they arise and then coming back to awareness of fill in the blank, body sensations, types of thoughts, thoughts of future,

present past gentle awareness of emotions as they arise being curious about how they feel in the body like it can be very basic instructions and i think it's helpful to have like a bulletin board where they're listed out so that people like what are we doing again you just read back bullet points but that it doesn't need to be that much more

Which is why I think pretty much anyone can learn how to teach mindfulness if they get those few bullet points down. There is a lot more nuance and complexity and depth

that you can go into, but that you don't need much more than the basics. Which is why in the case that, so Sparrow Rock had like introduction to mindfulness classes all the time. And I was there for all of them. And every time I learned so much. One of the beauties of mindfulness classes

is that the teachings are the same, but the experience is always new. Whatever this experience is, is always changing. This experience now is unlike any other experience when you really sense into the fullness of it. So we're always changing. Like energies are always moving. You know, what's around us and what's going on in our lives and the emotions that we're carrying.

always changing. The principles of mindfulness can be applied to whatever's happening now and now and now so that even if you go to the same introduction to mindfulness class a thousand times, it's always going to be very different. And we all need reminders because like none of us have mastered this. At least I haven't. You know, and Jack Kornfield would always say, if anyone here has mastered this, you can get your money back.

Let me know. I will be your student. So in the case of sort of a simple or maybe not a simple, but like a day long where there's not much said or if you're just like reviewing the basics, anyone can go to those even, you know, gurus or whatever and still applicable. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that. I really appreciate that lens, you know, just,

As you were saying it, I was thinking, oh, in my head, I think I have to control what happens for different groups. And then, as you said, you know, it just it every experience is an experience is different.

worth putting up on my wall totally yeah thanks yeah yeah i had a an experience that i just had recently with a brand new group um they were all women that came and some of the women came and they were i'm going to use the word really fearful they were like i've heard of meditation

I don't know if I could, and these were the comments I got, I can't calm my mind down for an hour. So this is kind of what they thought it was going to be. So their minds that are just so incredibly busy and consumed, like you were talking about earlier, Sean, with all of the outside stimulus and family and responsibilities, that even with the direction and the guidance,

some of them would spiral into I'm doing it wrong and which then compounded into I'm a failure. I'm not doing this. I'm not doing it right. So from my experience, I think that little bit of instruction along the way was really valuable for them to just know that no, you are doing it right. This is just your busy, busy mind.

learning to be still. So for whatever that's worth, there were women that were really nervous who at the end of it were like, "Oh, this is really good." But it took a few goals for them to trust that that's what they could do. Yeah. To bring awareness to the inner critic, awareness to the scaries, the fear, the awareness

that I think there's a right way and a wrong way. And like, what does that feel like? Like, what does that fear feel like? What are those scaries feel like? What does it feel like when you think it should be done a certain way? Where can you feel that in the body? What is that pressure? Where is that pressure in the body? And I bring gentle awareness to that. Am I judging the pressure to be good?

And many of those women are. Is that, am I judging that pressure to feel, to be bad? And many of those women are. Am I judging that pressure to be good and bad at the same time for different reasons? Yes. So, judgments. Okay. Judgment. Good, bad. Can I be curious about the judgment? Can I bring gentle awareness and, um,

Can I soften the judgment of the good and bad, come to the actual experience of what this feels like? What does that pressure feel like? Is this pressure familiar? Is this judgment familiar? In that type of scenario, if that pressure is very common,

The inner critic is very common. It might be helpful on a bulletin board or poster board or something to write out the tenets of self-compassion, the myths of self-compassion, examples of self-compassion of the inner critic. Be mindfulness to the inner critic. This is common and it's

understandable. And, you know, this is one of the things that Jack Kornfield prefaces his teachings that, you know, I have to remember anything, you know, this practice is not a chore. We're not trying to get anything. And in a lot of the retreats I lead, you know, I'll say like, nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to be. We don't have to

you know, I purposely came here today in a t-shirt. I normally wear a polo shirt, but today I wore a t-shirt to like partly convey that we're like shedding appearances. And it's not about like presenting something per se. Like I honestly, like I was planning on wearing a baseball cap to like further get this point across. But then I remembered that, um,

it's an old buddhist habit i have like the buddha said that um monks aren't allowed to teach the dharma wearing a hat i'm not a monk this isn't exactly dharma but i just felt weird about wearing a hat there's an old thing this old story of like some sage in india was wearing a hat but he was like actually concealing a knife or something and the story went out of control but

Anyway, I was going to wear a hat, but I felt like I was going to betray my mom's future. Anyway, my point is that we're not trying to be anyone or do anything or get anywhere.

This is something that can be discussed near the beginning or middle or end of a retreat, or quite frankly, any meditation session. A retreat is basically just multiple meditation sessions. That's all it is.

It's not like a fancy magical thing. It's just, you're just being present for a little longer than you normally do. You know, that's basically it. And so like a couple of years ago, we had a guest teacher, Corey Mascara, who's a wonderful person and a wonderful teacher and a dear friend of mine. But he, there's a guest teacher workshop that you can go back in your teacher dashboards and see, like he talks about retreats and meeting retreats. So you can,

If this is at all interesting, you can go back to his workshop. But one thing he said is if you know how to lead a meditation session, if you can talk about mindfulness for a little while, you can lead a retreat. It's just connecting multiple sessions together. That's all it is. It is a little oversimplified because there are things that come up in a retreat that can be quite...

intense and there's different ways of doing a retreat with different ground rules and you know an over overnight retreat can be complicated if you need someone on hand at the middle of night food and accommodations it can be challenging sometimes if you're not teaching at a retreat center where they're handling that for you or you know what what do you do if you do in-person day longs

two days in a row, but you're the only point of contact for 20 plus people. What happens if everyone's trying to come at you at the break?

you know, people have different things coming up, then it's really helpful to have multiple points of contact, very clear ground rules, you know, like a pre-retreat information packet that they can review beforehand can be really helpful. Sometimes interviews before the retreat even happens, like a little 10 minute check-in, having a, like a psychological evaluation survey to exclude people who, who,

may not be able to handle a retreat or who think that the retreat is going to allow them to discontinue all their medication cold turkey right away. So I'm oversimplifying by saying that if you know how to lead one meditation session or mindfulness talk, that you can do a retreat. But personally, I...

I'm very fond of leading online Zoom retreats for a weekend. I'm kind of going into tangent right now, but I really like doing like a Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon retreat session. And so when I usually start, I don't go into a big spiel about mindfulness and like nuances or the neuroscience or anything. For better or for worse, I usually start a retreat by...

just sitting there and notice what comes up. As a practitioner and as a teacher, it can be helpful to notice if there's a hindrance to presence. As a teacher, especially in retreat, I'll often just allow myself to sit there for a little bit and notice, am I present? What's coming up for me?

as someone who's leading this retreat? Can I meet any hindrances to presence with gentleness, with care? And then without forcing it, can I kind of dissolve that hindrance to be more present and then speak from presence? So for example, for any retreat session, I might start with just calmness

sensing into my experience here, is there a sense of doubt that I can't do this or they can't do this or that this isn't going to work? Can I meet that with gentle awareness and allow that feeling to be here, but can I be present for it? It's gentle awareness of it, it's felt sense. I don't have to believe it, but I know it's here.

exploring it and curious about it a little bit and then maybe remembering yeah this stuff works you know i'm just offering these gen these invitations to notice for themselves what's going on for them offer some simple tools for them to see what works for them and everyone's different

Some people will like it, some people won't. Some people will like me, some people won't. I'm offering these tools because I know they can work. Or for me in this moment, is there a sense of aversion, anger? I don't like some of these people. Temperature is way too hot.

"Ooh, things aren't going the way I wanted them to." Okay, can I meet that? Or, "I really want this session to go amazing. "I'm gonna change everyone's lives. "It's gonna be so profound. "Everyone's gonna be blissed out. "This is gonna be the best.

really hope that everyone loves this stuff and it's going to be amazing and I want them to love me. Everyone's going to stay to the end. My career is going to blow up in a good way. I really like this. This is going to happen. I need this to happen. That's going to get in the way of actually being present. Or maybe I had way too much coffee today and

It's hard for me to focus on this because I'm like thinking about a million things. How is this going to go? Everyone's asking me questions. You know, like I barely got out the door. It's hard for me to settle because I'm so distracted by all these things. Gentle awareness of that. Breathe. Sense into it. Allow it to be here. Stay with it for a while. Allow it to dissolve as much as possible.

There's different antidotes to these different hindrances. Breathe, go for a short walk, ground. Maybe I barely slept last night. I'm so tired. I'm so sluggish. It's hard for me to stay awake. Breathe some cold water on your face. Reflect on things that might bring some energy. Sense in the heart, sense in the head. Oftentimes when we think we're tired, we're actually not when we investigate it in the head.

It's just a coping mechanism usually to check out light, basically, via slumber. So anyway, being present at the beginning of the retreat and kind of like just being. You're not throwing a bunch of info at them. For some teachers, that's fine. But I like just kind of slowly...

settling. The snow globe has been so wound up where the snow is flurrying in everyone's lives. And for a lot of us, the point of the retreat is to allow that snow to settle. So in starting a retreat, we can calm the snow globe, speak from presence, work with our own hindrances. What is our tone of voice?

I hear a lot of, like when I lead retreats, I want to encourage courage. And sometimes it sounds like I'm speaking to a five-year-old. And in a way, I am, because I think everyone's five-year-old self needs love. Thank you for joining me in this conversation on the importance of considering participants' previous experience when structuring a retreat.

As mindfulness teachers and practitioners, it's really important to adapt to the unique needs of our students to create a more supportive and transformative experience for everyone involved. If today's discussion resonated with you and you're ready to take the next step in your mindfulness teaching journey, check out our mindfulness meditation teacher certification.

at mindfulnessexercises.com slash certify. Until next time, stay present, stay grounded, and continue showing up with authenticity and compassion. Thank you for listening.