Your description of what happens when it doesn't go right sounds very familiar. For years during retreats I struggled with sleepiness, I never knew when it was going to pop up. Usually after several days it would creep in, I tried numerous things with no success. Then I had a breakthrough. The day b...

For the most part I prefer not only no noise but also extreme quiet. I realized several years while on an individual retreat that, for me, the most powerful aspect of retreat was deep silence. I feel that my practice at home went to a new level when I started to recreate the silence that I was immer...

Keep an eye on your expectations, in the beginning especially there can be a lot of variation in how your retreats go. Early on I had retreats where I was calm and peaceful with an underlying quality of bliss followed by ones filled with restlessness and frustration. After many years my retreats hav...

When using a chair one thing to experiment with is how you place your feet. I have found that by widening the distance between knees I can fold my feet around the outside of the front legs of the chair and position them further back. This allows me to position my knees so that they are lower than my...

I was just looking through a new meditation book and it listed insomnia, like that of a sick person, as a sign of progress in meditation. First time I've ever seen that.

I started with a bench, then as I got older, when on retreat, I would alternate between that and a chair. Now I use a chair similar to what Dave posted, but a cheaper model ($69 in Office Max). I will use my office chair when at work and if you position the back and arm rests correctly it works fine.

One may observe conditions arise that may lead to the "lose it" That is interesting because at times I am aware of the attention wavering. Sometimes the attention shifts from the meditation object to another phenomenon such as a loud noise or an irritating itch but I don't consider that a...

One of the things that I have always found fascinating about meditation is what I call "losing it". I am sure that everyone here is familiar with it, you're sitting there in touch with your meditation object and you 'lose it', you slip into 'la la land'. What's interesting is that you neve...

This has been my experience too most of the time when on retreat. I'd like to continue to sit and walk the trouble is while the mind isn't tired wants to keep going the body is knackered. I just try to be mindful while lying in bed, this drifts in and out and the quality of it seems quite poor, but...

Whenever I am on retreat or putting in a lot time sitting at home I always have trouble falling asleep. I wait until I am tired but when I climb into bed my mind is often still very 'bright' or clear and concentrated. I have tried returning to practice while laying there under the covers but for som...

This is the only place where I have done a self retreat (vs group) so I have nothing to compare it to. Extremely quiet when I go in the winter, maybe 10-12 people. Very comfortably, you set your own schedule, probably expensive, the teachers are listed, you interview 2X a week but can always ask for...

I did my first meditation retreat at IMS in Massachusetts in the late 70's. Since then I have done somewhere around 20 ten day retreats, all at IMS. My last three were 10 day self retreats at the Forest Refuge (IMS). I don't have a local group or teacher, I get most of my dharma information from boo...