Mini home meditation retreat - update
An update on the mini home retreat I did last Sunday.
I tried to come into this with no expectations, and failed. I did not achieve the level of focus I was hoping for, but that is to be expected really.
It went very 'fast', (or at least, the concept of time only infrequently popped into my mind, until the last sit).
That last sit was hard. My attempt to trick myself by putting a walk afterwards did not work. I could feel the pull of the rest of the day. Next time I will assume I will be sacrificing half of the last sit to this. The first three sits were definitely a lot easier due to the knowledge that the whole morning was dedicated to meditation. Restlessness was very low, which I usually struggle with.
I did get quite a lot of dullness in sits two and three, not unusual for me in the mornings, though. I did end up cutting my walks quite short which maybe didn't help with that. After each sit I wanted to get back to sitting, so I only did one walk outside, and for the other breaks I walked in my office and stretched. Maybe some fresh air would have been helpful to increase energy a little.
Stillness was still growing by midday, it would have been nice to be able to continue into the morning. I'm not sure there is really any shortcut to getting 'warmed up' (cooled down?) for 3-4 days on retreat to recreate that state of mind. I might try longer sits next time, perhaps start with a 2hr sit to take advantage of the initial energy.
Definitely a useful approach, but not a substitute for retreat. Ah well.