21 Day Solo Meditation Retreat Looking for Suggestions

[Jordan]

Hello, I took 3 weeks off work in July and would like to plan out a solo meditation retreat for myself. I would like to spend most of the time meditating.

One issue that I thought might come up is back pain from sitting too much. I have been doing 2, 1 hour sits per day most days for 3-4 weeks and have a bit of low back pain from that. I would like to go a day without eating or drinking and just meditate for 16 hours straight at least once and it would be nice not to have back or knee pain. A solution I thought of is I could switch between seated meditation and hatha yoga like some sun salutations or walking. I could do some days of driving out to a secluded park and spending the whole day walking and meditating which should be better on my back. Does anyone have any other solutions for this? I am not sure if anyone had any benefits from massage or strengthening to help low back pain from sitting a lot. 

While seated I will be doing mindfulness meditation with labeling nearly the same as Leo describes in his video. While walking I like to ask myself variations of this question: "Is it possible to be completely at piece with my experience right now? Then see if it is actually possible by being at peace. Also I like to do the exercise from the "guided exercise for realizing you are god" video as I walk. I can also of course do the mindfulness meditation while walking too. 

Anything I should keep in mind while planning this out? I got a new batch of 5 MEO DMT I will test out this weekend. I haven't tripped in 2 years but I plan to experiment a bit with it during the 3 weeks. I might want to have some scheduled time for writing down insights that come to me any my experience day by day. I am also considering traveling for a few days to some nice parks. Let me know any suggestions of things I could consider.

 

[Jordan]

After sleeping on it, I think it is best to limit my sitting time and spend most of the time doing walking meditation to keep my body from getting too stiff and injuring my back. I have had some good experiences with walking meditation last summer so I will switch my normal 2 hour a day sitting meditation to 2 hours of walking meditation in preparation for my solo retreat.

I watched some videos on lower back health and it seems it isn’t just sitting in a proper posture and doing a few back exercises over 5 weeks will let me sit for 3 weeks without risk of injuring my back. The back needs lots of consistent movement and light strengthening over a couple years then I should be able to sit much longer without pain.