Speaker 1 · 0:07Welcome 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 comes from an online meditation retreat that I hosted a few years ago, in which people from all around the world came together to meditate for several days, all day, on Zoom. And so during this online retreat, one of the participants asked an important question: Can these kinds of non-residential retreats be as impactful as a residential retreat where people are together in person, staying in one place all day and also at night? Many traditional retreats involve several days of immersive practice in a secluded setting. Like at a monastery or a retreat center where everyone gets their own bed, and you're basically with these people for several days, if not several weeks. But now, you know, in this age of like post-COVID and everything's online, can online retreats be just as powerful? Or can retreats where people um come together in person to meditate together during the day, but then they go home at night, can those be as powerful too? Or can a day-long or just a small weekend retreat offer the same depth and connection and impact? So in this episode, I'll share insights on how to design meaningful non-residential retreats, ones where participants engage deeply during the day, and then they go home at night, or they log off and just kind of reconnect with their home at night and return the next morning to the retreat refreshed. Can these kinds of retreats offer just as much impact? Um and you know, especially because these formats of non-residential retreats can be much more accessible to people who can't afford to spend time away from home or afford the fees of a retreat center. So let's dive into this discussion and explore how to create powerful non-residential retreats and compare it to residential ones.
Speaker 2 · 3:38I just uh was looking for your thought on doing day retreats um without the overnight. So I found a fantastic space that is like 15 minutes from my house. It's everything that I was looking for. Um, I've never run overnight retreats before. So I think for my own comfort zone and to just kind of feel out how does this space flow and is the energy like what I think it is, I'd like to do something a little bit smaller first. So to have um like a weekend retreat that's you know all day Saturday, all day Sunday, but you go home at night and then come back. So um, so anyway, just looking for your thoughts or insights on that.
Speaker 1 · 4:29Um, well, I'm very happy for you. I hope it works out. That sounds really smart to just do a couple day longs like that, or like a connected, you know, two days kind of connected. I think that's that's really smart to try. I think a lot of people appreciate being able to go home, you know, sleep in their own bed, you know, eat their own dinner.
Speaker 2 · 4:51It shifts was like we would probably do dinner there.
Speaker 1 · 4:55Okay.
Speaker 2 · 4:55Um, but just because I've never held that or used this space before either. And I know it would shift the dynamic and sort of break um the environment by having everybody sort of, you know, disband and and then come back. Um but I I thought it might also be more available to people if they don't have if they've got little kids, say for example, or pets or whatever, they don't have to have somebody looking after them overnight. And um so yeah, I so just looking for if you have any sort of suggestions and how to structure that with that break in between where they've gone for the night and then come back, and then there'll be that that transition period to settle back in again, right?
Speaker 1 · 5:45Or you know, a sample structure that I might consider would be, you know, in the morning, eight o'clock, nine o'clock, or something to welcome people and invite people's voices in the room. Like, what brings you here? What are you hoping for? What's your treat retreat experience? But to invite voices into the room so we get a sense of like how are people feeling? What's here? Um, I think it's helpful for our for strangers to get a sense of who's here in many ways that helps people feel safe and connected, and then to establish some ground rules, some, you know, what is the structure, what's okay, what's not okay. You know, we don't want people counseling each other during the retreat. Usually, you know, we we want to create a safe environment for everyone. Um, I'm on hand to answer questions. If things are overwhelming, please back off and let me know, or go to the bathroom, or change the practice, you know, like some trauma sensitivity language, you know, where are the facilities? What's my intention as a teacher? You know, and to speak from the heart. I personally like toggling between um sitting, um, sometimes with guided meditations where you guide it, sometimes in silence, sometimes a like just a big mix of uh voice and silence.
Speaker 2 · 7:27It's a beautiful space where there's loads of nature options as well. So that can also be um absolutely filtered in.
Speaker 1 · 7:37Yeah, and you can invite mindful walking, maybe um kind of giving an example of what it means to do mindful walking and like where everyone's standing up and um and just kind of what does it feel like to be standing, feeling the bottoms of the feet on the ground? Does it feel like when I put weight on my right foot, feeling the weight there? What does it feel like to kind of move the body in the space? Can I keep awareness in the bottoms of my feet? What happens if I walk one step forward? Sensing in the bottoms of the feet, feel arched toes. So doing kind of like a mindful walking tutorial, like in the room, and then invite or or outside the room if everyone can hear. Um, and then inviting Matt outside or inside if there's enough space. Um, but yeah, you can have like a free choice time. You can do walking, sitting inside by yourself, yoga, you know, like okay.
Speaker 2 · 8:52I know for me the the retreats that I've been to where they've tried to like jam so much information in, you lose the processing time, which is so valuable, like the like you said, the nothing time, right? To be in your own stillness and not always being instructed. Um do you have a uh like a suggested length of time for something like that, like eight in the morning to eight p.m. kind of thing? Or like is there a standard industry standard, if you will, for that?
Speaker 1 · 9:24Um well, like at Spirit Rock, they're day longs uh basically 9 to 5 or 8:30 to 5, basically, partly because um they didn't want to serve dinner to everybody.
9:39Sure.
Speaker 1 · 9:40Um, I mean, if you want to have dinner there, you can do like mindful eating or mindful sharing or reflection and then go until until they start yawning. Yeah.
Speaker 2 · 9:55Um, you know, and some places will be much more loose and have some sort of like not exactly like entertainment, but something that kind of like they have an indoor pool, they have a a sauna, there's uh jacuzzi, like there's lots of options to build that in, but I just wasn't sure like how much of that do you just kind of go and you know do your own thing for a little bit and then come back. Um, I guess you just kind of have to build it and see how it goes.
Speaker 1 · 10:28Yeah. I mean, I I think it might you might be iterating to sense into what works for you and what works for other people. Usually with this stage of things, I would um invite you to consider, like, for you, what would feel like really good? And you might make your own agenda that's never existed before. Like, what brings life to you? What could you see yourself having fun with or feeling really nourished by as a teacher? Okay, you know, maybe you want a lot of interaction or none at all, or silence, or a mixture of discussion, like what would feel really good to you as a teacher?
Speaker 2 · 11:20Okay, that's a great way to look at it. Thank you.
Speaker 1 · 11:22Um, because if you feel enlivened by that and excited by it, or super like present with what you came up with, people will probably feel that and feel nourished by that too. Okay, without feeling like you have to be within a certain structure.
Speaker 2 · 11:39Yeah.
Speaker 1 · 11:40I know I'm coming from sort of a conservative orthodox background here, but I think that when we're teaching, it's important for us to feel connected with it. And so to kind of create like a tabula rasa blank page, and like what can I imagine that would feel um really rewarding?
12:08Okay.
Speaker 1 · 12:09And everyone's gonna be very different on that based on their experience, their personality. I would invite you to start from scratch and throw out any rules that you feel like you have to follow. Yeah, and it depends on the goals and the intentions of the retreat. Um, but at Spirit Rock, you know, I I coordinated, I don't know how many day longs, like what you're talking about, um, many of which were connected from a Saturday and Sunday. And I've seen teachers do extremely different styles. Um, but um I think that what you commented on, like with where so much is being thrown at people with concepts and teachings, like it can my sense is that two days later most people are gonna forget 95% of what was said, yeah. Which is why honestly, why I started this company, mindfulness exercises. It's not called mindfulness theory, mindfulness concepts, yeah, yeah, it's mindfulness exercises because I saw too many day longs where that happened, where people were gonna forget 95% of what was said, but in the day longs that felt like a retreat where there was space for people to be and and not have the expectation to think or do or talk or figure things out, that's where you kind of feel the energy ground. And people are like coming home to their bodies.
Speaker 2 · 13:46Yeah.
Speaker 1 · 13:48And in today's Western world, we need that.
Speaker 2 · 13:54Yeah.
13:55Yeah.
Speaker 2 · 13:55My intention is to create a space that's not um like a checklist of did all the activities, right? Like, because that's often what happens is like hurry up. I found myself doing it with the teacher training. Well, I was like, would you stop like actually reading the practice? What are you doing? Like that was like a one of those like, oh my gosh, what a hypocrite. But it was a huge learning curve for me to go, oh, yes, set it up so that you can actually be in the experience.
Speaker 1 · 14:32Yeah.
Speaker 2 · 14:33Not just outside of it going check, check, check, right?
Speaker 1 · 14:36Right. Totally. Yeah, I mean, um, I've thought about doing day longs like that, um, where I have a name for it. I've never like shared this publicly or anything, but like I call it just sitting together. Nice. And we're just sitting together. And um I haven't done this, and I don't think I've ever seen this, but like the idea is that you get people in a room, and you can sit on a chair or a mat or the ground or whatever, but you're just sitting together in the room, and that's it. You can close your eyes or not, you can look around or not, you know, but no one's like knitting or reading or writing. We're sitting together. And maybe, you know, as a teacher, I would say we're sitting together. And every once in a while, just kind of like giving voice to what's happening. Noticing our experience, feeling what it's like to be here.
Speaker 2 · 15:47Nice to show up with no agenda, yeah. And just experience whatever it is you experience, right? That's beautiful.
Speaker 1 · 15:54And those are my favorite teachers. That's why I love my Taoist teacher in China. Zero agenda. Zero. Like every time I'd go uh sit with them. You just make it up as we we went along. Sometimes we'd go for a walk in the woods, sometimes we'd just sit there in silence, sometimes he'd pour tea with broken English and talk about the mind or the heart or whatever. There's a guy close to me named Anam Tupton, who's a Tibetan teacher, and he'll give big talks and retreats, zero preparation, and it's beautiful.
16:37Yeah.
Speaker 1 · 16:38And like sometimes he'll talk for 17 minutes about something he's been thinking about, and then he'll sit in silence for five minutes, just looking at everybody, and everyone just kind of sitting there. We don't know how long the silence is gonna last. It's not a meditation, he's just pause, he just stopped talking. Like, okay, and then, but it's not awkward, it's just connecting in real time, sitting, and then 11 minutes later, something new will pop up and it'll crack a joke, not like sarcasm, it's just funny something humorous occurred to him, and now we're all laughing. It's like organically weaving between silence, you know, stream of consciousness, quoting ancient teachers, you know, and it's beautiful. And my I love those teachers. Like the teachers who come up with the 50 bullet point outline, we're gonna go from here to here to here to here to here. Yeah, it's there's nothing wrong with it. I personally don't resonate with that as much, and I know some people do, and that's fine, but anyway, I'm just like yeah, it's casting the process of its own organic nature.
17:59Yeah.
Speaker 2 · 18:00Totally, yeah.
Speaker 1 · 18:01And that's just being present with whatever comes up. Thank you for joining me in this exploration of daylong and weekend mindfulness retreats, or just non-residential retreats in general. As we've talked about, this format offers a more accessible and flexible way to support people in deepening their mindfulness practice while also fostering a deep sense of connection and presence. If this conversation resonated with you and you're ready to take your mindfulness teaching to the next level, consider joining our mindfulness meditation teacher certification, where you can join our program in an affordable, accessible, self-paced way to certify to teach mindfulness in professional settings. You can learn more at mindfulnessercises.com slash certify. Until next time, stay present, stay grounded, and continue showing up with authenticity and compassion. Thank you for listening.
