This post focuses on a few general tips for your first 10-day Goenka retreat. Then I will suggest some things to take with you. I will also include a packing list in the end. If you want to know more details about my experience during the retreat, there will be a future blog post on that. 

General tips

Think hard about if you are able to do the schedule

There was a speaker installed in every room with a pre-programmed bell ringing throughout the day to inform you that it’s time to wake up or get up to meditate. The lights are turned off at 9:30 pm, so you’ve got 6.5 hours of sleep opportunity. If you’ve got efficient sleep, you might sleep 6 hours, but if you don’t, you might only be getting 5 hours or less each night. For many, this might be a dealbreaker. On the other hand, if you are able to take naps during the day, then there is plenty of opportunity for that. For example, you can pretty much just stay in bed until breakfast, but you’ll have to deal with your roommates getting ready in the morning. Generally, pretty much whenever you don’t have to be in the meditation hall, you could potentially take a nap. But then, again, during the day, your roommates might disturb you.

Arrive early so that you can socialize with your roommates

They told us to arrive between 3 to 5 pm and I would recommend arriving early at 3 pm so that you can get to know the people who you will be sharing your room with during the next ten days. If you arrive at 5 pm, your roommates might have already bonded and socializing might be more difficult. If you arrive even later than that, you might not be able to talk at all with your roommates, because the first meditation starts at 8 pm and after that, the Noble Silence begins. 

In case your course is bilingual: Listen to the English dharma talk if you speak English 

The german one sounded monotonous, was only a soundtrack without video footage and took around 10 minutes longer. You can take a look at the English ones here.

Things I suggest you take with you on retreat

A disclaimer: I suggest taking a lot of things. 

I realize that many people arrive by train or by carpooling, so I marked certain things as optional on the packing list. It may seem like a lot, and to be frank, I felt a bit stupid packing so many things, but in the end, I was happy I did.

I went to the retreat during December in Germany, so this list is especially suited for a winter with temperatures ranging between -5°C and 10°C. 

Make sure to get earplugs if squeaking wooden beds, floors and/or snoring roommates disturb your sleep. Experiment with foam or wax earplugs to figure out which work better for you.

There’s a good chance you will have several roommates. I had four. And with every move one would make and every step one would take, there was something, somewhere squeaking. If you have really good earplugs, you might even manage to miss the 4 am alarm clock, so you might be able to stay asleep until breakfast. In the meditation hall, there is a lot of coughing, swallowing, moving and sneezing going on, so sometimes I used my earplugs during a group sit.

Prepare for getting a cold

I would estimate from observing the people at the retreat that there’s a 30% chance that you will catch a cold on a retreat during wintertime. I got a pretty bad cold on day 6. On day 8, I had a 38.5°C fever. I thought about going home. I told the teacher and the helpers. The teacher told me I should stay and participate in all of the group sits and rest for the remaining time. The helpers gave me one paracetamol around noon and another one in the evening. Taking the thermometer with me and being to tell them a solid number and not some vague thing like „I think my forehead feels slightly warmer“ enabled me to show them that I was actually really sick and not just a really whiny person. The following day, I told the teacher that the fever still wasn’t down significantly, so he suggested that I only participate during one group sit and the discourse. 

But still, the medicine they gave me wouldn’t have been sufficient, at least for me personally. They gave me a nose spray and two paracetamol in total for 4.5 days of having a full-blown cold. I took my own ibuprofen and took 3 *each day*. Asking for paracetamol was always a hassle and I don’t think they give you pain relief if you only have a sore throat. But, er, pain relief makes your life much less painful if you have a sore throat. 

So pack exactly the kind and amount of medicine you need to fight through a 7 to 8 day cold. (Not that I think that it is always advisable to stay if you get sick, but that’s another issue.) Some suggestions: 

• nose spray with Oxymetazoline hydrochloride, because those are the ones which help for nasal mucosal swelling
• a box of tissues
• throat lozenge
• fever thermometer
• Ibuprofen or Paracetamol
• some Dexpanthenol Cream for dry skin at nose
• optional: saltwater nose spray 
• …

Take a digital alarm clock. A wristwatch is also useful. 

You won’t have access to your phone and there wasn’t a clock in our room. Also preferably take one which doesn’t beep every time you hit a button, because that might disturb your roommates. 

Be wary about checking your wristwatch during the meditations though (it’s better to leave it in your room).

About the things they tell you not to take with you

When you arrive, at the registration, they will ask you to hand them over your phone and they provide you with a locker for your wallet, car keys, etc., but we didn’t have access to the locker during the retreat. 

They don’t strictly investigate if you took a pen and paper, food and so on with you even though they tell you not to. If having no real dinner is distressing to you, then take a snack like a bag of nuts with you. Some might say that breaking the rule in that way might be detrimental to your progress on the retreat. Fair enough. In my opinion, though, you should make yourself reasonably comfortable to ensure you can put your full attention on following the meditation techniques. Sometimes little things like something to write or a snack might make the difference.

In a questionnaire, upon arriving at the center, they ask you about what kind of medicine you brought with you. I personally didn’t tell them about any of my medicine because I was worried that there might be a hassle associated with it and I didn’t want to risk being bothered by them for even a second in regards to that (thyroid hormones ). I don’t think they would have, but on the other hand, I think I overheard a conversation with a student and a helper, where the helper requested the student should tell the helper about when she took pain relief. But I might be wrong and it probably wouldn’t have been bad at all, because the helpers were generally very nice and reasonable. I think there might be a benefit to being super conscientious about the rules and being absolutely honest in the questionnaire. It might be troubling to some people to hide some information. Judge for yourself on that one.

In this tutorial, I will explain how to set up the call for The Home Practice Program with Shinzen Young. The Home Practice Program is a phone-based (no video!) retreat consisting of five four-hour sessions.

One four-hour session has the following structure. Times may vary for your particular session.

PART 1 (Approx. 1 hour 30 minutes)

• 9:50-10:00 am Pacific / 12:50-1:00 pm Eastern
  Join the conference using the call-in number and access code for Part 1
• 10:00-11:30 am Pacific / 1:00-2:30 pm Eastern
  Instruction / Guided Meditation / Possible Q+A

SELF PRACTICE (Approx. 1 hour)

• 11:30 am-12:30 pm Pacific / 2:30-3:30 pm Eastern
  Possibilities: Bio Break / Practice in Motion / Interview with Shinzen
  (Shinzen will exit the conference call and be available for anyone to call directly with questions about their experience. Please keep in mind that he may not have very long to spend with each caller. Shinzen is in Tucson and can be reached at (802) 310-9454.) 

PART 2 (Approx 1 hour 30 minutes)

• Rejoin by 12:30 pm Pacific / 3:30 pm Eastern
  Join the conference using the call-in number and access code for Part 2
• 12:30-1:00 pm Pacific / 3:30-4:00 pm Eastern
  Group Q&A
• 1:00-2:00 pm Pacific / 4:00-5:00 pm Eastern
  Final Guided Meditation

Setting up the call was confusing to me at first, especially because I would call from Germany. They talked about some FreeHD Phone and you would have to call this free number, and then give that code, but how one should watch out for fees. I eventually figured it out. Here, I will explain how to participate from outside the US from the countries on this list, but also mention instructions for people within the US.

Tutorial

What you need:

• A phone, preferably a smartphone
• a phone plan
• optional, but saves you money: a phone plan which gives you unlimited minutes to call a number within your country
• optional: the Skype app to call Shinzen during the break
• optional: Internet connection

You will be using the free service of the website www.freeconferencecallhd.com/, but this isn’t very important to you, because you don’t have to sign up or anything. All you need to know is that, on your (smart)phone, you just call a certain number depending on the country you’re in. The list for that is given here. I am from Germany, so I called the number +49 69 1200650760 on my phone. If you’re from the US, you’d call +1 712 770-4160. Note, that all you need is a phone plan for your own country. You don’t need an expensive international plan. 

When you called that number correctly, there will be a prompt to type in an access code. The access codes were provided to me via email about a day before the retreat. Since each session is structured in a 1.5 h call (part 1), 1 h break for self-practice (you’re not on the phone), and again 1.5 h call (part 2), there will be two access codes. Don’t worry about “using up“ the codes, they are functioning more like an address. 

That’s pretty much it! 

EDIT: In response to this post, u/TetrisMcKenna on Reddit mentioned that there is also a free Android app and iOS app offered by Free Conference Call HD with which you can call over WiFi. So you don’t even need a phone plan, but you can also use WiFi alternatively.

The line will be open to call about 10 minutes before it starts. I recommend calling 5 minutes before it starts, because there is no reason to wait much longer. In those 10 minutes before the session, the participants weren’t muted, so pretty much you could hear some noise, there were people saying Hi and a lady announcing that this was the Home Practice Program. Then, just in time, Shinzen joined and everyone but him was muted for the rest of the session, except for the Q&A parts, when everyone but him and the questioner were muted. So when during the guided meditations, there is absolute silence (no background noise from Shinzen either), except when he’s talking. 

One more thing: 

During the break, there is the option to call Shinzen directly to ask questions about any aspect of practice without having everyone else listen to it. In the email, it said, “Shinzen is in Tucson and can be reached at (802) 310-9454“. This is a US number! So anyone outside of the US needs to find a way how to call there with their phone plan. In my case, my carrier didn’t even offer an international plan, so I decided to use Skype. They offer plans for international calls to certain countries.  

I just needed to call from Germany to the US, so I chose the following option:

It’s only about $4 and if you chose Visa, then first month is for free. (For whatever reason, if you choose any other payment method, like PayPal, then you don’t have the free trial month.)

Then you only need the Skype app and you dial that international number and it will work!

Unfortunately, in my case, I wasn’t able to reach Shinzen, probably because there were too many people calling him during that hour. They didn’t announce how many people were participating in the call, so I cannot tell you, what your chances are.

In any case, I hope you found this tutorial useful. If there are any remaining questions, leave a comment and I will address them to the best of my ability.