I’m going to share some practical tips that I thought would be useful for any newbie student. Hopefully some of these tips will help you succeed in completing your course.

1. Get to know your schedule and plan ahead. If you haven’t seen it, this is what the schedule looks like:

   • 4:00am — Wake up bell

   • 4:30–6:30am — Meditate in the hall or in your room

   • 6:30–8:00am — Breakfast and rest

   • 8:00–9:00am — Group meditation in the hall

   • 9:00–11:00am — Meditate in the hall or in your room

   • 11:00am–1:00pm — Lunch and rest

   • 1:00–2:30pm — Meditate in the hall or in your room

   • 2:30–3:30pm — Group meditation in the hall

   • 3:30–5:00pm — Meditate in the hall or in your room

   • 5:00–6:00pm — Tea break

   • 6:00–7:00pm — Group meditation in the hall

   • 7:00–8:15pm — Evening discourse

   • 8:15–9:00pm — Final group meditation

2. Arrive at the retreat as early as you can. If you want first choice on which bed you want to sleep in, this is a perfect opportunity. Make sure you test out the bed. Don’t make the same mistake as I did. I chose a gimpy bed that was U-shaped after 5 minutes of laying down on it. Luckily, I used my extra blanket to fill in the void and made it a little more tolerable to sleep in. Consider the other factors as well such as being closer to the window, thermostat control, and coat hooks accessibility.

3. Layout the ground rules with your room mate. Some people like to sleep in the cold, while others prefer warmer conditions. Hope that you have a cool and easy going room mate as I did, but I still offered them to enter my space to control the thermostat and window control. It’s harder to conduct communication when noble silence is in effect, so be courteous with your bunk buddy.

4. Find out if there are health conditions with your room mate. It helps that you know just incase if anything happens and you can call for help when needed.

5. Fill out the time slot for private bathrooms if you want privacy after unpacking your belongings. Some people have daily routines they would like to continue following and taking a shower is one of them. Personally, I found that taking a shower after lunch is the best because I’ve already stuffed myself during breakfast so lunch is usually a smaller meal. Earning you little extra time in the shower if you need it. Yes, I’m one of those guys who loves to take long showers, leave me alone.

6. Bring a flash light. These retreats tend to be located in some remote forest area so there might be random animals roaming around. The resort I stayed at had a pathway through a forest leading to the meditation hall. There was one early morning, I was still half asleep and walking through this dark forest. A large animal ran across the pathway and I stood there for a couple of seconds thinking if I was still dreaming or was it really a wolf or a coyote of some sort. But I didn’t care at that time, I was tired and agitated but luckily I didn’t get bitten. Chances are it might’ve been a coyote because it was a full moon and I heard howling all night long.

7. Wear comfortable shoes that you can slip in and out quickly. Forget bringing Blundstone boots or Vibram Five Fingers like I did. Bring a pair of beat up runners that you don’t care much about if you get mud on it.

8. Do not eat like there is no tomorrow. Sure the vegetarian meals are free but this isn’t your local AYCE (All You Can Eat). But I won’t lie though, I did make this mistake myself. During the first 3–4 days, every single one of my meals were multiple plates because I was trying to compensate for low protein intake so I would load up on a lot of nuts, seeds, oats, and yogurt. Not to sound like a health conscious maniac, I was only geeking out on nutrition because my mind wanted to fixate on something fun. You may probably think, how is that fun? Well let’s put it this way. Eating should be a communal activity right? You share tables with others but all the chairs are facing towards a wall. No one sits face to face while eating. So what do you do then? Well, I did what everyone else were doing. Stare outside of the window only if your early enough to get a window seat. I preferred focusing on my food instead. Every bite I took was like this sensual experience of gratitude. Knowing how lucky you are to have a opportunity to discover what the human mind is capable of.

9. Be cognizant with how much your mind sways from the meal you just ate. This trick was something I figured out on morning of day 4 when I really wanted to quit. Luckily, I had a chance to speak with the teacher about being frustrated with my focus issues. He asked to wait until the session ends and we talked privately for 5 minutes. At that moment, for some odd reason the idea of having huge meals was a causation of my mental alertness hence the last tip I just wrote. I still remember speaking to the teacher about this and he said “That could likely be the reason but hang in there and don’t quit. When your mind sways, focus on your sensations. Don’t react, just observe.” So pay attention to what you’re eating, it can make or break you.

10. Coffee will be available. Yes, you coffee addicts, it will be available but don’t expect any top grade stuff you drink from your indie coffee shop. The quality of coffee offered is from the super market shelf. If this is unacceptable for you connoisseurs, bring your own coffee instead and brew it inside your mug. Green tea is also available if you need an alternative kick for caffeine.

11. Find your best personal time slot to seriously meditate. Look, you committed 10-days of your life to sit down and really self reflect. Don’t squander your precious time by half ass’ing your sessions. Personally, I knew meditating first thing in the morning was easiest to start but tough to finish. My mind takes a bit of time to become fully awaken so the first hour of meditation is sometimes a breeze. Most of the time, I would sit through the 2 hour early morning session without any breaks in between and little bit of shuffling. Yes, this may seem daunting but I’ve seen experienced students do this every morning without issues. Personally, my 2 hour meditation sessions were the most profound sensations that I’ve experienced. Nothing like I’ve ever felt before in my life.

12. It’s normal to encounter lucid dreaming and nightmares. It happened to me and reported the same from others as well. I spoke to the teacher about this and said I was in the process of shedding “saṅkhāra” from my subconscious. According to the practice, a saṅkhāra is a unit of misery. Some saṅkhāra’s are deeply ingrained into your subconscious as we lead our habitual lives and other are just surface level. As you create cravings or aversion, you generate saṅkhāra. I don’t know if this directly correlates with having lucid dreams or nightmares but I’m just passing on what it means. Take what you will out of it for you science folks.

13. Bring a lacrosse or tennis ball. If physical pain is becoming unsurmountable, use the ball as a roller for your back. If you don’t have a ball, go to the washroom that has more space and do some basic yoga stretches. I know this is against the rules but do whatever you can to endure through the practice. I got called out by one of the course managers because I was performing a lat stretch publicly. If you’re knowledgable in stretching exercises, only perform the very basic movements because everything else is considered a yoga stretch or strenuous exercises. Yes, I’m absolutely serious.

14. Find your optimal sitting posture. Be prepared for burning back pain, a lot of it. To manage your back pain, try and flex your abdomen. By flexing, you’re bracing your spinal position, giving it support for a better sitting position. Once you start to disciplining your mind, the pain will subside and almost temporarily become non-existent. There are very few students I’ve seen that can meditate in a cross legged position. The majority tends to prefer using the bench instead and put a cushion on top of it. You can bring your own sitting apparatus but they usually provide cushions, benches, and mats so you don’t need to bring it. As a reminder, if you want a chair, you have to make a request in advance and also need an explanation of why you need one.

15. Practice and perform squat exercises. Prior before going to your course, strengthen up your posterior chain so your back pain can be more manageable. Check out the book called Supple Like A Leopard as it breaks down step by step on how to squat correctly.