I Was A Cheater Among Zombies At My First Silent Meditation Retreat

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Please forgive me — I’m a cheat. Or I suspect I might be. If so, I want to make amends, and for that, I think I’ll need to learn to walk way slower.

It all transpired at my first day-long silent meditation retreat — my friend’s idea, not mine, so I can’t take credit for such a brilliant idea, which it is.

I’m a sucker for preparation. I wanted to make sure I had the right things packed. It was all day, remember, and silent, so no way to yell at the top of my lungs, “Anyone have an extra toothpick I can borrow?!”

We got two sets of instructions from the group managing the retreat — one for newcomers to meditation, and one for newcomers to this group’s events. I’m not new to meditation, but I’d never been to a retreat. There was info on bringing our lunch, suggestions to wear comfy clothes, maybe pack a pillow, and definitely throw in a sweater, just in case.

There were also instructions on how to do a walking meditation. I try to use my daily walks for meditative practice, which means minutes here and there being in the present, looking around, feeling the body’s motion and air on the skin, and halting all rumination or blabbing out loud to myself. But I wasn’t quite sure what a formal walking meditation might be.

I looked through the instructions, just to be sure. And when I say, “looked through”, you can envision the word “glance”.

Maybe we can add that I discounted the word “slooowly” which was how the walking part of the meditation was described.

I showed up in cozy attire, with plenty of blankets to pad my seating area, and no clue about what I was soon to witness at the retreat. Namely, zombies.

You don’t believe me, I know. You think I’m kidding, and I wish I were. You tell me if I’m mistaken about the zombies, and whether I cheated my way to a goal that had nothing to do with mindful meditative practice.

This was how the 8-hour retreat was run: first, the leader of the retreat gave a talk, then she either guided us through a 30-minute meditation, or we did a silent one, then we took a 30-minute walking meditation by ourselves outside on the front lawn of the property. This pattern cycled through the day.

The group holding the retreat rented a church on the main street of a small town an hour west of Washington, DC. The church was an old stone structure — beautiful — and sat on a property dotted with old-growth trees. It was a lovely setting, and little did I know, but the walking meditations were supposed to play out in a handful of steps back and forth on the lawn.

When I asked at the registration table that morning about the walking meditation, a woman assured me that I could handle it any way I wanted. Except for the indoor part of the retreat, for which we were supposed to be on time and silent, the outdoor time was our choice for how we experienced it. This meant one thing to me: I could get in some miles.

I’d be mindful, of course!

And I was mindful, but I felt like a cheat.

When the first 30-minute walking break arrived, the 100+ participants filed out of the church and onto the front lawn at roughly the rate of mountain erosion. I still have no idea why everyone was walking so slowly the whole day, everywhere, every time, but I get it. We were supposed to be in the moment and not ahead of ourselves with a “have to get somewhere” mindset. I think it’s a great idea, and now I wish I’d adopted it more wholeheartedly. Future goal.

Once we were all out on the lawn, I got my big surprise. The humans with whom I’d just shared a meditation space had turned into, for lack of a better idea, zombies. You tell me if they weren’t.

They slowly spread out across the sprawling lawn. Trees stood at regular intervals around the property. Then, with great intention and extreme focus, each of them slooowly took one step forward and paused. Then they caught the other foot up and stood still in silence. Some would raise their arms to the sky or out to the side, or slooowly turn around and step back the other direction. They were slow-moving, speechless creatures with no facial expression.

What would you think you were looking at?

Now, I was being mindful, so I took in the scene with equanimity — acceptance without judgment. I was perfectly fine with the spectacle in front of me, and I mildly enjoyed the fact that some drivers in the cars passing by looked over at the lawn with bulging eyes.

But, then, instead of joining the slow-moving creatures — although I tried for a short time — I inched my way to the exit of the property, turned onto the sidewalk that led to the center of town, and as soon as I was out of sight of the mindful slow-steppers, I made a deal with myself that I’d be forgiven for what I was about to do. I clicked start on my Garmin watch. Off I went to gather miles for the day. Mindfully gather, mind you.

When the half hour came to a close, I veered back onto the church lawn, slooowed my pace to a crawl, and filed back into the church for the next set of meditations. I'm certain I was the only non-zombie cheater who logged goal-oriented miles.

It’s true, I didn’t technically cheat. We were allowed to handle the retreat however it suited us best, but I came home wondering what it might have been like if I’d followed protocol and had a slower experience. A couple days later, I pulled out the instructions and read them word for word. By the end, I was saying, “Ohhh! I get it!” I put my shoes on and went straight out to my lawn. I took some grounding breaths and began the true body-awareness exercise that a walking meditation is. I’m pretty sure my retreat experience would have been quite different if I’d turned into a zombie rather than hit my goal on my Garmin watch.

My favorite part of the retreat was the three 30-minute silent meditations we had. They far surpassed the phone-app 10-minute gigs I do at home. I’ve already adopted them into my daily practice, along with a slooow walking exercise in my yard among the trees.

In retrospect, I realize that the only zombie at the retreat was the one zoned into her insistence on walking rather than the full experience of it. Life is nothing if not its lessons.

Zombie lessons.

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Hope your week is a good one, friends.