Initially hesitant about having a friend on retreat, I felt comforted having Jo there, and we agreed to keep a physical distance. We each placed a shawl on a cushion at opposite ends of the same row to avoid eye contact. Once inside, we entered the meditation hall to choose a zabaton, a large square cushion that would be home to our meditation sits for the week. Entering the building, a former monastery with towering Georgian pillars displaying the word Metta (or loving-kindness in Pali, an ancient Indian language), I felt a bit less daunted, knowing I had a few more hours to call my children and remind my husband to feed and walk the dog.
I was relieved to learn that silence would not begin until the following morning, and not, as I’d feared, the second we crossed the center’s threshold. In the parking lot on arrival day, Jo and I met Josh Senders from Port Washington, N.Y., a second-time participant. Now that I was entering a new phase of life - no children at home for the first time in 25 years - it felt like an opportunity for me to walk the talk. As a life coach, I frequently encourage my clients to push themselves out of their comfort zone: “That’s where the growth happens,” I tell them. I worried about feeling disconnected and lonely, and even concocted an exit strategy that involved borrowing Jo’s car and returning to pick her up a week later. Leading up to my week of silence, I read the FAQs on the website, glanced at the schedule, and deliberated whether to bring snowshoes (I didn’t) and a stash of dark chocolate (I did).
more than tripled to 14.2 percent in 2017 from 4.1 percent in 2012. Meditation is seeing the kind of growth that yoga did a few years ago, she said and is now a billion dollar business with a rapidly rising number of participants - the number of adults meditating in the U.S. “The meditation retreat is one of the fastest-growing trends within the fastest-growing sector in tourism: wellness travel,” said Beth McGroarty, vice president of research, at the Global Wellness Institute, a nonprofit that promotes wellness. Silent retreats have been attracting meditators for thousands of years, and with recent research confirming the benefits of mindfulness and meditation - reduced stress levels, lower blood pressure and improved sleep, for example - a growing number of travelers are going on them. After I told my friend and fellow meditator, Jo Brody, about my plans, she opted in, too. When an internet search guided me to one called “Path to Awakening,” led by Joseph Goldstein, a co-founder of the meditation society and a renowned teacher of vipassana meditation, also known as mindfulness or insight meditation, I signed up. While preparing for my youngest child to leave for college, I decided I was ready to take the next step toward deepening my eight-year meditation practice - a silent retreat. This ceremony was the start of my silent meditation retreat in February at the Insight Meditation Society, a retreat center on 400 wooded acres in Barre, Mass., just 60 miles from Boston. I walked back to my meditation cushion, took a deep breath, and felt a wave of lightness come over me. When it was my turn to stand front and center, I placed the bag into a deep wicker basket - piled high with other phones in plastic bags - waiting for the reverberating gong of a Tibetan singing bowl to announce its surrender. With a small knot in my belly, I inched forward and approached the small stage where five meditation teachers sat silently. Holding a transparent plastic pouch, my cellphone zipped inside with a white label displaying my name in bold letters, I followed the line as it snaked toward the front of the meditation hall.