Getting Discomfortable with Silence: Day 1

When I started recording my reactions to the 3-day silent meditation retreat I finished last week, it took me a few hours just to get through the first day! So I decided to turn it into a trilogy, with one episode chronicling each day of this mind-expanding retreat.

The retreat was actually a bit of an afterthought, a good way to kill a weekend in Mexico following my week of volunteering in rural Oaxaca. But it turned out to be a surprisingly profound inner adventure — one of the most spiritual experiences I’ve had since doing Ayahuasca last year, and I was completely sober this time (unless they put something in the vegan slop they kept feeding us…).

The retreat took place at the Hridaya Yoga Centre in sleepy but picturesque Mazunte, Mexico (just an hour away from popular beach paradise Puerto Escondido). I didn’t know anything about Hridaya going into it, but I have been meditating inconsistently over the last few years with good results. Meditation and mindfulness is one of the subjects I want to explore a lot more this year, and this was a great start, even though the Hridaya method is quite different — and decidedly more “woo woo” — than any meditation I’ve tried before. It is based on the teachings of Indian sage Ramana Maharshi. Here’s a video of the founder, Sahajananda, explaining more about Hridaya Yoga:

 

In this episode, I’ve tried my best to explain the Hridaya philosophy as far as I understand it (which is not well), and detail all of the amusing and fascinating things I experienced over my first day of silence, meditation, and weird-ass yoga. There were moments of absurdity, moments of cultish creepiness, and moments of genuine insight. I started very openminded but grew increasingly skeptical of the Hridaya brand of new age spirituality, only to discover that there really was something special about their method after all… though I’m not convinced that their interpretation of that something is necessarily correct.

My adventures in silence continue on Day 2.