Our product picks are editor-tested, expert-approved. We may earn a commission through links on our site. Why Trust Us? I had been alone with mine for about hours. A respite from a life in which I was increasingly anxious and overstimulated, unable to get out from under a constant drip of noise.
During the first few days of the retreat, I discovered serenity in small doses. But instead of it continuing to get sunnier in my brain, I noticed storm clouds moving in. Now my thoughts were as dark as the cell I found myself in. Seven days in, I was learning just how damn loud silence can be.
It is the simple but not easy act of observing your mind and not wishing what you observe to be anything other than what it is. The book also gives instruction for meditation, which is the formal training for mindfulness in the way that hitting balls is the formal training for tennis. With enough practice, the book promises, you can take your mindfulness off the mat or pillow, chair.
Sweet, I thought, perhaps a bit credulously. I began meditating that day. At first I did ten minutes in the morning, using popular apps like Calm and Headspace. Then I attended a two-day retreat at the Zen Mountain Monastery in upstate New York and took an eight-week mindfulness-based stress-reduction course.
When my practice was at its most consistent, I was sitting for 45 minutes a day, six days a week. Toward the beginning of this year, as winter thawed into spring, life got busy and my practice waned. I perpetually felt like a tuning fork that had just been struck.
