Zen Meditation and Running Retreat, Barmoor 2017

I have come back from my first retreat with a sense of a body; my arms, legs, knees and feet have all become solid, living parts of me. My body has become a refuge from tumbling, terrorising thoughts and can now bring me, moment to moment, into the world. Prior to the retreat I felt like a wandering head-on-a-stick, a ‘teetering bulb of dread and dream’, looking outwards through dimmed eyes and looking rabidly inwards. But during those few days in Yorkshire something seemed to drop down, or drop away. I could feel gravity through my bones and cold air on my skin and fantastic, open stillness.

I loved the morning exercises, waking up in the dark and going out to the yard to welcome the day, peaceful, alert and intent. I loved the food! And the care we took to eat. I loved the running too, although I found the vastness and beauty of the moors quite impossible to contain in my awareness and had to settle with the earth beneath my feet and swinging arms and legs. Maybe once, we reached the top of a hill and stopped to look around, I saw the sky and the grass and the sheep with clarity. My mind was quiet enough to ask nothing and just see – ‘ordinary mind, wanting nothing’.

Sitting in meditation was sometimes wonderful and sometimes very hard. This was the first formal instruction I had received and I learnt so much about the practice from Jake and Stuart. I was also constantly surprised by the intelligence of my body; during some sessions, feelings of sadness and anger were so entwined with physical sensations that I didn’t want to continue. But with these feelings was also catharsis and an easing of certain knots that I’ve carried for a long time.

An owl was hooting as we did our morning exercises on the last day. I felt like it was a good omen to send us home. But arriving back to my life has been hard. Fifteen minutes of cycling through central London and the mind of clarity and joy that I found in North Yorkshire seems pretty remote. But, as Jake said, we should give it up graciously. And I have the wonderful feeling that it’s really still here (my body is still here!) and with a daily practice I will be able to get some of it back home.