Just finished my first solo retreat! Experience + Question

[IsmaelMM]

How long? 4 Days.

Where? Family house in the middle of a forest in Germany!

What? First 3 days: Around 6h accumulated time, bouncing between techniques 
            Last day: 4 x 1hr of strong determination sitting!
 

Experiences:

1. Gained a lot of insight about how to better plan the retreat for next time 

2. More familiar with new techniques, like walking meditation and concentration practice

3. Generally my meditation practice gained a lot of momentum! The gains are real, feels really good. <3 

4. Spend some time in the forest at night doing some walking meditation too. Just a couple minutes really taught me how soft I became from "sucking on societies        tit" for the last 20y's. 

    Got connected back to this "process of survival"! Kinda grounds you in this very primal sense.
 

Questions: (A lot of 'em)

- Can someone try to explain? Had similar experiences?

-> Last day. Third 1hr sit. Towards the end of the 60 mins the "physical ailments" always get strongest. 
= Me: Really put the Suffering = Pain x Mindfulness Rule to work 

And then all the pain truly dropped to 0 and all of a sudden had total control of it. 

Started laughing and was in some kind of extacy for like a solid 10 minutes. 

I could really recognize all the pain in my knees and ankles like free floating experiences and saw that they'll exist without a me observing them!

While all this happend,

I remembered Leo talking about how the more mindful you get the easier it should become to sit motionless for long periods of time 

and be able to enjoy totally at peace smiling

-> So I set the timer for another 60 min.

And I sat there totally happy, still in some kind of trance! Loved it <3

 

Thanks for reading through!  Thank you Leo for sharing all this knowledge with us <3 Happy x Mas from Germany. 

[Cepzeu]

13 minutes ago, IsmaelMM said:

 

- Can someone try to explain? Had similar experiences?

-> Last day. Third 1hr sit. Towards the end of the 60 mins the "physical ailments" always get strongest. 
= Me: Really put the Suffering = Pain x Mindfulness Rule to work 

And then all the pain truly dropped to 0 and all of a sudden had total control of it. 

Started laughing and was in some kind of extacy for like a solid 10 minutes. 

I could really recognize all the pain in my knees and ankles like free floating experiences and saw that they'll exist without a me observing them!

While all this happend,

I remembered Leo talking about how the more mindful you get the easier it should become to sit motionless for long periods of time 

and be able to enjoy totally at peace smiling

 

I had a similar experience with SDS. I lasted 60 min but remember that once i started feeling pain, I felt more into it and it turned into pleasure