How to Create a Meditation Retreat in the Comfort of Your Home

A complete guide to a 2-day custom recharge of your mind and spirit

Why on earth would anybody want to retreat even more, in times when social distancing is the norm? While the mere term itself implies withdrawal and isolation, the last weeks, ironically, have been a time of intense connection for me.

I was constantly on the phone with friends and family members I haven’t spoken to in months. I checked the news round the clock, from various countries and sources. My social feeds were on fire. I was on Zoom calls with five people at once and even got drunk on my “night out” on the balcony in the course of a very intense Skype conversation.

While it had its upsides, the reason I found myself on my self-made two-day isolation from isolation was because of the downsides: a feeling of extreme overwhelm, and paradoxically, complete social exhaustion.

Between the urgent itch to check on my grandma every two days, the need to keep in touch with everyone so as to “not lose touch,” and staying on top of current events to “know what’s going on,” I completely forgot to take care of one thing: my own thoughts and feelings. While my body was indeed withdrawn, inside, my head was about to explode from all the input.

Ironically, one of my canceled plans was a 10-day silent Vipassana meditation retreat. I decided what I needed most was a self-directed retreat that could be a substitution for that.

I once heard the saying, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” This is what I experienced firsthand when I serendipitously stumbled on psychologist Tara Brach’s guide to design your own home retreat.

Greatly encouraged and inspired by it, I gathered all my experience from my last few years of meditation practice, added my knowledge from years of self-exploration and the self-study of Buddhism, and created my own two-day meditation retreat.

How Your Custom Meditation Retreat Can Benefit You

The holistic benefits of meditation

First of all, it’s important to note I regard Buddhism as a philosophy, not a religion, and I conduct meditation as a secular practice that’s backed by 2,500 years of Buddhism, as well as modern science.

According to the Greater Good Science Center of the UC Berkeley, meditation sharpens your attention, can increase your resiliency to stress and your capacity for compassion, can have a positive impact on your relationships, and can even improve your physical health, among other benefits.

I’ve also personally experienced the powerful and positive effects of meditation — it helps me deal with my anxiety and impostor syndrome and teaches me to not take my negative thoughts and emotions too seriously. I attribute a great deal of my decision-making capacity and the ability to move forward even when I’m doubtful to the steady practice of meditation.

I practice mindfulness meditation, and this is also what I did during my two-day retreat. Since this isn’t a guide on how to meditate but on how to create favorable circumstances for it, I won’t go into the details of the practice itself.

However, here are a few helpful resources to put you on track:

• Meditation apps, like Calm, Headspace, or Insight Timer, are wonderful resources if you prefer guided meditations. If you’re new to meditation, this is what I recommend.
• Psychologist Tara Brach’s RAIN method (recognize, allow, investigate, nurture) is what helped me bring structure into my mindfulness practice
• “Meditation Tips for a Lifetime of Practice”: The best guide and introduction to several types of meditation I’ve come across is this one by Tasshin Fogleman

You don’t have to be an avid, experienced meditator to design your own meditation retreat. My usual meditation practice consists of 15-30 minutes daily, and since I’m human, I skip days more often than I’d like to admit. In my suggestions for the preparation and the daily schedule, I’ll describe multiple ways to design a beneficial retreat for yourself, regardless of your level.

What meditation within the framework of a retreat can do

A group of psychologists have examined the beneficial effects of traditional meditation retreats and found they can be largely effective in reducing depression, anxiety, and stress and in improving the quality of life of participants.

While I haven’t come across scientific studies for self-designed home retreats, I’ve experienced similar results. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say my home retreat improved my overall quality of life, I can attest to significantly lower stress and anxiety levels, lasting for weeks.

What’s more important, however, is the change in my perceived ability to deal with rising stress and anxiety levels. The whole point of mindfulness meditation is to notice, observe, and accept all thoughts and feelings that arise without acting on them.

Andy Puddicombe, founder of the meditation app Headspace, puts this nicely in this video: He compares the mind to a trafficky highway, where the passing cars represent the thoughts and feelings. Instead of being an angry driver on the highway, mindfulness meditation helps us to become a neutral observer of this highway — one who knows all cars will eventually pass.

While a daily meditation practice of 15-30 minutes also helps to attain that mindset and to become more neutral toward what goes on in our heads, it’s a slow process that requires a lot of patience. The lack of quick results and instant gratification makes it often hard to stay at it.

Meditating for several hours a day for two days in a row helped me to take a glance at the inner peace and calm more avid meditators usually talk about. It showed me what my mind is capable of with a lot of practice. What’s more, it helped me bring this awareness of thoughts into my everyday life, away from the meditation-cushion. In the end, as the author and Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg put it:

We don’t meditate to get better at meditating, we meditate to get better at life. — Sharon Salzberg

How to Design Your Meditation Retreat

Tara Brach’s guide to designing your home retreat as well as the schedule of my rain-checked 10-day Vipassana course both helped me a lot when I organized my own retreat.

From the idea to the start, roughly a week went by. During this time I realized a whole string of things I needed to think about and prepare: I don’t live alone — can I still do the retreat? What will I eat? What will I do all day — I can’t meditate for 10 hours by myself!? Why two days — can I only do one, or should I go for more? What if a client calls?

These are all questions I’ll answer in the paragraphs below.

The duration

First, I needed to decide how long my retreat should last. What I aimed for was a balance between impact and feasibility: I wanted to feel the benefits but give myself a chance to pull it through.

My decision to go with two days was based more on my gut than any evidence. Two days seemed like a serious-enough commitment and also reasonable due to my previous meditation experience. I figured I could prolong if after two days if I felt I needed more.

It worked well for me, so if you can identify with my regular but rather moderate meditation experience, this might work well for you, too.

Also, two days is the length of a weekend, so it’s a time frame for which almost everyone should have the ability to totally disconnect from job obligations, even if you aren’t self-employed.

The schedule

The daily schedule of the conventional 10-day Vipassana retreat I was to attend is pretty straightforward:

Note this is a timetable for meditation under supervision, in a group. It’s a meditation boot camp, so to say, which comes with a strict noble-silence (read: no-speaking) policy.

While the schedule served as my anchor and helped me see what a day at a meditation retreat can look like, I made several adjustments to it.

What I aimed for was a daily schedule that respects my predisposition (e.g., natural wake-up and sleep times). I also wanted something that pushed me further in my meditation practice and out of my comfort zone while remaining rewarding (i.e., something I’d genuinely look forward to).

As Amanda E. White, LPC put it,

“True self-care involves balancing two seemingly opposite ideals: radical self-compassion and accountability.”

In the end, what you want is a schedule you can pull through. I had no other expectations toward myself and my retreat than to stick to my well-thought-out schedule — to be accountable to myself.

When you design your schedule, I can recommend a similar balance: a well-wrought timetable you can reasonably stick to.

Wake-up time

Since I’m a night owl, I set my wake-up time to 8 a.m., which is early but reasonable for me.

On the above Vipassana schedule, you correctly see the wake-up bell is four whole hours earlier. While I believe I can brush my teeth at 4 a.m. under peer pressure, to set a wake-up time significantly earlier than I’m used to when alone would do nothing more than slim down my chances at sticking to my plan.

Talking about balance, I recommend the same for you: Choose an early but reasonable wake-up time for you.

The activities

While I talk about a meditation retreat, it doesn’t mean meditation is the only thing you’re allowed to do. I trust I’m able to meditate for days and do nothing else if I’m under guidance and am among people who do the same. At the same time, I know it’d be arduous for me to do it alone.

To decide which activities to pursue and for how long, I did a quick brainstorm session: I wrote down what activities came to mind that would fill my ideal retreat.

What I aimed for was a mix of (1) physical movement, (2) mental stimulation, (3) fresh air, and, of course, (4) meditation. All of these are proven to enhance your psychological and/or physical health.

Within these components, there’s a vast array of activities suitable for a solo-retreat.

In the end, I settled for yoga, short walks in nature, reading, and listening to Dharma talks (source: here) — components that constitute a healthy, balanced day, after which I’d feel well.

The activities you choose can be entirely different from mine. However, I recommend they both feel good and are good for you (n.b., these don’t always overlap!).

Here are a few further ideas from my shortlist:

• Replace yoga with a run and thus connect physical movement with fresh air
• Any kind of other home workout apart from yoga
• Replace or mix Dharma talks with TED talks, podcasts, etc. This is especially suitable if you’d rather aim for intellectual stimulation over spiritual stimulation.
• Replace reading with another hobby (drawing, coloring book, etc.)

In the end, this is what my schedule looked like:

As for the length of each meditation session, I roughly followed Tara Brach’s guidelines:

“For beginners, schedule several 20–30 min sitting periods in the morning, and several periods in the afternoon and evening. Have each sitting period alternate with a 20–30 minute period of walking meditation, yoga, Tai Chi or quiet mindful walks outdoors, if available. […] If you are more experienced, make your sittings 45–60 minutes, with a period of mindful movement between each sitting.”

Since this was the first time I was about to meditate several times a day, I settled for 30-minute sessions.

The food

Proper planning of your retreat also involves thinking about practicalities, like food. As you can see, cooking wasn’t on my list of activities, so I needed to think of my meals in advance.

I followed two guidelines of Buddhist teaching:

• Out of personal conviction and due to the fact that violence in any form, under any pretext whatsoever, goes against Buddhist guidelines, I decided to eat a vegan diet during the retreat (I’m vegetarian)
• Sloth and torpor are one of the five hindrances to meditation in Buddhist teaching, and a packed stomach greatly facilitates physical languor — so I went for light meals

To make this as easy and feasible as possible, this is what I did the day before my retreat:

• I bought vegan muesli and soy milk for breakfast
• I ordered vegan Indian food for lunch that’d last for two days
• I prepared a big batch of fresh salad with a tahini-olive-oil-soy-sauce-lemon dressing.

Whatever diet you opt for, make sure you prepare or order it the day before, unless you want to make mindful cooking one of your activities. If so, make sure to have the ingredients ready.

The rules

To pick up on the right balance between self-compassion and accountability to self, you need to set rules. Without rules, you run the danger of spending two days with Netflix and your phone on the couch under the guise of being on retreat.

These were my rules:

Rule #1: Strict no-internet/phone/laptop policy:

One of the main reasons I did the retreat in the first place was because of social overwhelm and news anxiety. I’m sure I’m not the only one these days.

In Austria, where I live, people made 80% more phone calls than usual at the end of March (112,000,000 minutes per day countrywide).

Studies (like this one, this one, or this one) show negative news, screen time, and social media cause or amplify personal worries, anxiety symptoms, depression, and psychological distress.

Since the calming and recharge of my mind and spirit was why I had the idea of the retreat in the first place, to stay away from all the internet and all kinds of devices was my top priority.

I highly recommend you do the same, as it’ll help you see things more objectively and bring better concentration to your retreat and practice.

Rule #2: As little talk as possible

The Vipassana retreat I wanted to attend cultivates a strict no-speaking policy throughout the 10 days. This stems from Buddhism’s Noble Eightfold Path (the practices which can lead one to experience nirvana). The concept of right speech is the third division of this path.

According to Walpola Rahula, who was a Buddhist monk and a professor of history and religion at the Northwestern University,

“Right speech means […] [o]ne should not speak carelessly: speech should be at the right time and place. If one cannot say something useful, one should keep ‘noble silence.’”

Since I live with my partner on 50 sqm and am all for feasibility, my rule was, therefore, to speak as little as possible. This prevented my retreat from becoming awkward, strained, or absurd, and it still allowed me the chance to practice noble silence.

Rule #3: Keep at it

I made a vow to myself to follow through with what I set out to do and to avoid the all-or-nothing mentality at the same time.

In the end, I allowed myself a few breaks. Therefore, I finished 1.5 hours later than my schedule dictated. Also, I fell asleep during two of my reading sessions. However, this wasn’t a problem at all. My promise to myself was to keep at it and jump back if something came in-between.

Be gentle with yourself. You can’t know how feasible your schedule is before you’ve done it. If things take longer, accept it. If you become idle, accept that too, and gently move forward. This isn’t a race or a challenge. It’s a practice of accountability and self-care.

Inevitable Hindrances

Here comes the hard truth: Even if you follow all of the tips above — have a feasible schedule, have prepped food in the fridge, and have made the vow to stay away from the internet — you’ll be tempted to break these rules or even to entirely quit the retreat halfway through.

The reason is our stone-aged survival instincts aren’t made for internal and external stillness. and our minds are constantly looking for things to do, to improve, or to prevent. Being still with the present moment is just not what kept us alive in the caves when the saber-toothed tiger attacked.

Buddhism defines five main reasons (hindrances) that aggressively prevent our minds from staying present, sitting still, and meditating:

• Sensual desires (want): All the boo-boos of your body, from hunger to sexual desire to the urge to stretch your legs
• Hate, anger, and ill will: These can be directed at yourself, someone else, or the construction site next door that doesn’t allow you to meditate
• Agitation, restlessness, worry: The feeling everything will fall apart unless you do something about it, right now. All your anxious thoughts and fears fall into this category.
• Boredom: sloth, torpor, languor, stupor: The feeling of “I’d rather do something else, like call a friend or check Instagram”
• Doubt: Doubt will tell you it’s total nonsense to do this retreat in the first place

Knowing the name of these bad boys makes it easier to deal with them once they show up. They show up for everyone differently, all to different extents, but they’re the most reliable companions of any meditation practice, as they’re in some form always there.

Here’s how it usually goes for me when I meditate and how it went on my retreat:

My strongest hindrance is restlessness (paired with worry), quickly followed by boredom.

My restlessness

If I observe it closely, I can feel the restlessness in my prickling fingers and toes whenever I sit down to meditate. I grew up with the conviction only those who do something are worth something. Just to sit doesn’t count as a meaningful activity, so my mind rebels every time to prevent me from the feeling of uselessness.

By now, I’m somewhat used to the tingling and was prepared for restlessness to show up. I more often than not can resist the temptation to run around in circles and have found a way to meet the hindrance with compassion.

What I did on the retreat was thank my restlessness for wanting to take care of me, and, at the same time, I reassured myself it’s safe to just sit for two days. I observed the tingling and didn’t act on it.

My worry

My feeling of uselessness sometimes becomes bottomless. When restlessness feels ignored, it tends to throw everything I ever did wrong into my face, just to show me I don’t deserve to just sit here like everything’s fine.

It might sound mundane, but, again, all I can do is to sit it out and not run away from these thoughts and throw myself into distracting activities. Through a lot of reading and self-observation practice, I (at least, in theory) learned that pain is normal and inevitable, and the best way to deal with it is to allow it to be.

“In any case, the point is not to try to get rid of thoughts, but rather to see their true nature. Thoughts will run us around in circles if we buy into them, but really they are like dream images. They are like an illusion — not really all that solid. They are, as we say, just thinking.”

— Pema Chödrön

My boredom

Boredom was a harder one because I didn’t anticipate it. It showed off at the second part of day one, once the novel experience of being on a home retreat wore off.

For me, boredom manifests in thoughts like, “Jeez, how much longer will this session last? I definitely can’t do another one.”

The real low point happened on the morning of day 2. When I woke up at 8 a.m., tired, and knew I had 5+ hours of meditation in front of me. I felt like cutting the day in half and finishing at noon.

What helped me, again, was to stick to my original promise and sit down for the first meditation session. Once I was meditating, I could see boredom for what it was: a feeling just like any other. I acknowledged it, observed the sensations in my stomach that told me to do something more fun today, and carried on with the practice.

What about you?

Note these examples are uniquely my own experience, and you might not encounter any issues with boredom, worry, or restlessness.

However, you’re likely to encounter some of the above hindrances. Here’s what you can do:

• Accept there will be thoughts and feelings that’ll want to prevent you from going through with your plans
• Think about which of the above hindrances are most likely to show up for you in advance — you know yourself best
• Once you encounter a hindering feeling during your retreat, try to see it for what it is: a hindering feeling — not more and not less. These aren’t real reasons to cut it off.
• Be compassionate toward yourself. Thank your thoughts and feelings for wanting to take care of you. See, they’re often like a child throwing a tantrum. Just like you wouldn’t yell at the child, don’t yell at yourself either.

While I managed to go through with the schedule I set, when I started to meditate, I had several episodes that I called off after a few minutes. They were either too painful or too boring. It’s OK and normal if this happens to you. It doesn’t mean you’ve failed or can’t meditate or shouldn’t do a retreat.

The compassionate thing to do is to accept it and try to sit back on the cushion whenever you can. All the above hindrances are an inevitable part of life and such a retreat shows this very clearly. While pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. We only really suffer when we can’t accept the reality we face.

Try to see everything that comes along your way as part of the process. Even if it’s hard and even if you can’t go through it at that moment. If you approach your retreat with an open mindset toward everything that can come up, you’ve already freed yourself from a large potential burden.

As Pema Chödrön put it:

“The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.”

Further Tips

Apart from what I described above, here are the things that further helped me go through with my retreat:

Tip #1: Set an intention

As you can see on my timetable above, I started the days by setting an intention. I lit a candle and took a few notes in my journal about why I was doing this retreat in the first place. This helped me set the mood and served as a reminder throughout the day when things got difficult.

You can go with one or several intentions. Examples for intentions are the cultivation of inner peace, acceptance of things as they come, or the deepening of self-love. There are no rules but to make the intention relevant to yourself.

It’s important, however, to not confuse your intention setting with goal setting. Goals are quantifiable future-oriented targets bound to a deadline that signal the present isn’t good enough. As Marta Brzosko highlights in her guide to intention setting on a spiritual journey, intention-setting is more about the how than the what.

A good example is the intention of deepening self-love where she suggests to ask, “How can I formulate my intention so that it’s possible to enact regardless of how I’m feeling?”

Here, you could decide to respond with self-love and speak to yourself with kindness, even if you feel bad, unworthy, or ashamed.

Tip #2: Reward yourself

As I wrote above, a meditation retreat means work. To sit in one place several times a day with nothing but your thoughts can be challenging both emotionally and physically. Thank yourself for doing this — for taking the time to show up for yourself.

My reward was a long hot bath after both days while I listened to ambient music. For you, it can be chocolate or your favorite audiobook. Again, this is something you need to make relevant to no one but you — a tiny gesture that honors your practice and effort.

Rewards look different from person to person, so it’s hard to give suggestions. The only rule, again, is to do something that feels good and is good for you (i.e., a cigarette or beer doesn’t count as an appropriate reward).

Tip #3: Work with what you have

I’m sure for many people — like for me — the timing, location, or general circumstances aren’t perfect for a retreat. However, be honest with yourself. Were the last months perfect? Will the next six months be? What I want to get at is: Work with what you have, and avoid the all-or-nothing mentality.

Sure, a silent retreat isn’t ideal if you don’t live alone. Still — it’s doable. Set your own rules, and keep talking to a minimum.

Maybe you don’t have a whole room for yourself to do this — in this case, pick a corner, and try to isolate it with cushions.

Maybe you’re self-employed and feel it all collapses if you don’t check your emails for a day. Here, an out-of-office message might help.

I didn’t make these scenarios up — I live on 50 sqm with my boyfriend and am self-employed. I’m sure my retreat wasn’t perfect, but rest assured it was still a wonderful, enlightening experience you can have too, despite any perceived obstacles.

Final Thoughts

My two-day retreat was the most rewarding and grounding experience I’ve done in the past weeks.

However, I’d lie if I said it was easy and felt like a good holiday weekend because it didn’t. Meditation is a powerful tool that points you toward difficult — often shameful or anxiety-inducing — thoughts and feelings which our defense mechanisms otherwise tend to avoid by keeping busy.

When it’s only you and your head for a full day or two, there’s nowhere else to look, which can be hard, sad, exhausting, and, frankly, also boring. We’re so used to doing something that our body and mind rebel like a child when forced to sit still.

Three things were crucial for me to get through the difficult moments of my retreat:

• Accepting myself, my thoughts, my and feelings and speaking kindly to myself throughout (as described in the Hindrances section)
• Reminding myself of the intention I set on both mornings
• My predefined rule to keep at it, no matter what. I seem to be accountable to myself as an act of self-love and self-care. To frame it this way helped me stay focused.

Finally, I’d like to bring Buddhist teacher Ethan Nichtern’s words to your attention. He wrote,

“Meditation is one of the best ways to make sure you are not socially distancing from yourself.”

May this home-retreat experience be as rewarding and insightful for you as it was for me.