Weekend Skype retreats

I'm thinking about pursuing a suggestion made by Nikolai on another thread about offering home retreats, communicating via Skype, similar to those offered by Shinzen Young. This is very intriguing for a number of reasons.

Has anyone done one of these retreats with Shinzen? How are they structured? Does the group get together by teleconference? Are there individual interviews? Would you suggest any modifications or improvements?

Thanks,

Kenneth

Edit: It was not Nick, but tomotvos who suggested that I offer Shinzen-style home retreats. Sorry, Tomo!

Hi Kenneth,

I've done a bunch of these. Shinzen's courses are broken up into sections (things like Focus on Rest Part1) that you'll see on basicmindfullness.org/ . You can purchase each section by paypal a few days before the phone retreat. The Friday night one is for two hours , the weekend ones are each for 4 hours, including an explanation of the contents of the course, a guided meditation, a q & a period, an hour long break during which you can call Shinzen and another short guided meditation. There are two of these conferences per day. On the Thursday before the retreat generally an organizer will email people who have signed up a code for the conference, which they can use when calling freeconferencecall.com . If you're free right now, I could describe this to you in more detail through skype.

I've done the Shinzen retreats. Personally, I prefer Skype over phones for these things because you can turn up the volume on the computer and let it run without tending to it and the sound quality is better. There are issues with Skype (people have to mute themselves out).

The phone retreats you dial into a conference and the website gives you a code. There is a controller who can mute everyone and so forth for the instructional phase. He has done individual interviews while everyone else is meditating.

The downside of the Shinzen retreats is that they tend to get repetitive.

"I'm thinking about pursuing a suggestion made by Nikolai on another thread about offering home retreats, communicating via Skype, similar to those offered by Shinzen Young. This is very intriguing for a number of reasons.

Has anyone done one of these retreats with Shinzen? How are they structured? Does the group get together by teleconference? Are there individual interviews? Would you suggest any modifications or improvements?

Thanks,

Kenneth
"

Hi Kenneth,

I think my suggestion was podcasting and making more recordings. But hell, I would do a skype weekend. It makes sense cos then you have more of us able to take part. And I think you'd be able to earn more doing such a thing as your costs are low and we don't have to travel anywhere. I'd pay to do it!

Kenneth, just to let you know there is demand for this here, I was planning on asking you to supervise a two week-ish home retreat. To go retreat here in the UK costs about £20 a day (sustainable dana). So 2 weeks is £300-ish (inc. travel)...which translates to about 6 hours personalised instruction with you. I was thinking about ~3hours would be enough for the two weeks. 1 for preparation, then an hour per week.

Advantages:
You're familiar with my meditation log.
Im familiar with basically what you're teaching.
Contact with you would help keep me on track.
Its cheaper.
I wont have to wear robes and eat gruel.

Disadvantages:
Harder to keep on track.
Little sense of sangha.
No relevant/appropriate dharma pep talks.

With groups of us doing weekend and perhaps longer retreats later, it helps address some of the disadvantages of home retreats.

Much of the advice/guidance needed to setup conditions to realistically home retreat could be put in a faq etc making it even more focused.

Its just inevitable that you'll be asked for this more and more Kenneth methinks.

ps kudos to tomotvos for suggesting this!

I think a key issue here will be to include teleconference or not. Skype would clearly be the technology of choice from a cost perspective, but would it shut too many people out? I don't think so, but I am a geek and not necessarily a representative sample.

And thanks, sparqi

This sounds really good! I've been glum about coming up with the vacation time and, especially, the $ for a NYC retreat anytime soon. But this has a pretty good chance of working with my family's budget negotiations. The Shinzen phone-based session I did was only 4 hours, so hard to think of it as a retreat. But it was a good 4 hours. Guided group meditation with solo sitting time, during which Shinzen called participants for 1:1 interview. Then group Q&A and more instruction. Worked well, I thought.

I've also been thinking about a longer solo no or low cost, home retreat. Compared to cost of a center-based retreat, and within the context of retreat budgeting, paying much closer to the sustainable rate for some extra skype meetings with Kenneth wouldn't be hard to justify.

"I've also been thinking about a longer solo no or low cost, home retreat. Compared to cost of a center-based retreat, and within the context of retreat budgeting, paying much closer to the sustainable rate for some extra skype meetings with Kenneth wouldn't be hard to justify.


"

This theme comes up a lot and it occurs to me that this could be a decidedly KF spin on things. What if, in addition to the Shinzen-style "retreat", that sounds biased towards "instructional", you offered a more formal home retreat agenda? Come up with a schedule that involves, principally, solo sitting/walking meditation, phased in with scheduled interviews throughout the weekend. If a number of people signed up for a specific weekend, then you (Kenneth) could budget your time accordingly, hit a bunch of people in a compressed period of time (at a most cost-efficient rate), maybe throw in one or two dharma talks that all participants would Skype into, and it becomes more like a "real" retreat (not that I have been on one and know anything about what I am talking about!), minus the group dynamic of having everyone in one place.

Another alternative is the free version of DimDim at: www.dimdim.com/

This software operates within the web browser, so no additional costs are incurred. It is designed for video conferencing and includes a cool feature of sharing a drawing space or whiteboard. I'm not current with all of the details, but it seems iike it's worth a look.

I found out about this through buddhist teacher Ken McLeod, who has been successfully using this for years with his students.

I've participated in the home retreats/conference calls supervised by Shinzen Young. I found them really excellent.

There was a $20 fee for the call. Some of that went to paying the conferencing service.

I'm trying to remember the call format. It was something like this:

The calls vary in length, from 2 to 4 hours, according to his schedule for that day. But it should be stressed that there are definitely sections during that time when he is not present. He tends to speak for 15 to 20 minutes contextualizing a method or set of methods. 10 minutes or so during which the lines are opened up for questions. Then he spends 20 minutes or so verbally guiding the participants through the specific practice. 5 to 10 minutes opened up for questions. Next, you hang up the phone and then comes 30 to 50 minutes or so of individual practice.

Call back into the number for a check in with Shinzen. Questions and clarifications. Then a break for more individual practice. During this second individual practice session, you also have the option to call him for a brief individual interview. I did not use the individual interview, so I'm not sure, but my sense was that each one lasted at most a few minutes.

At the end of that second practice session, the group reconvenes for questions, clarifications, and final comments. End of call.

The longer calls differ from the shorter mainly in having longer or more numerous practice sessions, I think.

I regularly take part in the Shinzen Young online retreats and highly recommend them. The 4 hour sessions are quite potent and it's very easy to fit one into your weekend. Two is often more than I wish - although this is partly a factor of the time difference and the strange hours that result.

Kenneth, why not take a leaf out of Shinzen's book and consider offering the same sort of module approach: a set of different offerings provided once a month over the same weekend.

On subsequent weekends these modules are developed upon, and in time repeated in an ongoing cycle of instruction. One poster spoke of the repetition involved. That, however, is mitigated/not an issue given one's own progress, the need to return to basics again and again - eg 1st gear, and the on-going dialogue available with Shinzen.

I would hesitate at taking an entire weekend off. (?) I would leap at the chance to spend a few focused and directed hours going through 1st/2nd/3rd gear and the possibility of some feedback from you.

I have toyed with the idea of a daylong home retreat (8 hours) in which I arrange in advance to have a meeting with Kenneth at some point during the day. I have never done a skype retreat before, but am open it and to a day long experience with a mix of sitting/walking/instruction/q and a and a possible brief one on one meeting.

Yes, I see a lot of potential for home retreats with Skype or teleconference. I think we should do this. (Thanks to Shinzen for his creativity and boldness in pioneering this kind of retreat.)

I'm curious about the schedule that Shinzen uses. Does he post it on his website?

basicmindfulness.org/

"Yes, I see a lot of potential for home retreats with Skype or teleconference. I think we should do this. (Thanks to Shinzen for his creativity and boldness in pioneering this kind of retreat.)
"


Yes, a deep bow of love and appreciation in Shinzen's direction. Doing online retreats with you, Kenneth, would not be the end of my online retreats with Shinzen by any means. A rising tide and all that ....

I see this thread dates back to May.
Have there been KFD Skype or Dimdim retreats?
Sounds like a good plan.

Um, yeah, thanks for reviving this idea!

I've never attended one myself, but some people have organized group meditations and talks on USTREAM:

www.ustream.tv/discovery/event/religion-...order=most-attending

The basic idea is that the "host" streams video and audio to all participants, who can interact with the host and with each other via a text chat on the right hand side of the screen.

The "host" has an option as to whether he does or does not want to record the stream for people to view after the live event is over.

Sounds like a time and a half. Count me in.

Related to this: how do you guys record Skype sessions? I just had my first session with Kenneth and recorded it with a free version of Vodburner ( www.vodburner.com ) hoping it would generate a split screen video file. Unfortunately it only produced a video with one side of the communication. Or maybe this is a limitation in the free version?