Our Blog

Ben Hildebrand Shares Experiences From 14, 56 and 7 Day Darkness Retreats A long darkness retreat — typically thirty days or more in total isolation from light — produces changes in consciousness that shorter retreats cannot. Ben Hildebrand spent 56 days in total darkness at Hridaya Family, our darkness retreat facility in Chiapas, Mexico. What follows is what he found, and what actually shifts at each stage. When the door opened after 56 days, our retreat host came to speak

A Mandala, Similar to That Used in Tantrik Vizualization practices Most yoga teachers learn a great deal about the body before they teach. Almost none of them are asked what the body is. This is not a trivial omission. Your answer to that question, whether you have examined it or not, shapes every cue you give, every adjustment you make. It fundamentally changes the very orientation of your own practice and therefore the way you guide future students. A teacher who believes t

Left to right: A Student with Kyle and Sasha Most people who search for a Vipassana retreat are not really searching for Vipassana. I can't tell you how many people write to us asking about Vipassana retreats, basically using the word Vipassana as a substitute for the word meditation. They are searching for a serious meditation experience, and Vipassana is simply the name they know. It is the most recognised entry point into formal silent retreat practice in the secular world

Most people picturing a meditation retreat in Mexico picture the coast. Tulum, maybe, or somewhere hot, with a pool and a view of the Caribbean. Clean, photogenic, expensive. San Cristóbal de las Casas is none of those things. It sits at 2,200 metres above sea level in the highlands of Chiapas, surrounded by pine forest and mountain valleys, in the same region where Tzotzil and Tzeltal Mayan communities have maintained their spiritual traditions without interruption for centu

A Group During A 10-day Silent Meditation Retreat The short answer is that it's truly impossible to say! For some people it can be the most beautiful, life affirming, healing and deeply reconnecting thing they will ever do. For others it can be highly uncomfortable and difficult on every level. Often it is a mix of both. Ten days sounds like a long time until about day four, when it starts to feel like it might not be long enough. Sometimes by day 7, it feel like the retreat

Somewhere around the third or fourth day of Noble Silence, your system will begin to settle and you may taste a release of tension in your body that you did not know was so tight. It is not dramatic. It is more like putting down a bag you had forgotten you were carrying. The particular tension of being observed, of managing how you come across, of monitoring the gap between what you feel and what you show, begins slowly to release. This is one of the first benefits of Noble S

We get a version of the same message most weeks. Someone has read about darkness retreats, feels pulled toward the idea, and wants to know if it is for them. It is almost never a simple question to answer. Not because darkness retreats are complicated to explain, but because the answer depends almost entirely on what the person is actually looking for. The message usually says something about wanting peace, or depth, or a reset. What it is really asking, underneath all of tha

One of Our Darkness Retreat Cabins My first darkness retreat was 48 hours. Not because that was the recommended length. Because that was what was available, and I was curious enough to take it. I also fasted the whole time I was in there. Again, this was not a recommendation. It was just a very impromptu set-up, and the food arrangements were not so well thought through. Two days in complete darkness. It was enough to meet something real. Enough to catch a glimpse of both the

When you remove light from the visual system, the brain does not simply go quiet. In some ways, it may become more active. This is one of the more interesting ways to begin understanding what happens during a darkness retreat. The brain does not passively register the absence of input. It responds to it. Actively, creatively, and sometimes strangely. This does not mean we already have a complete science of darkness retreats. We do not. The direct research on multi-day darknes

A yoga teacher training abroad is a full immersion program held in a foreign country, usually between 14 and 28 days, designed to support a depth of study that a part-time local program rarely provides. What makes one worth crossing an ocean for has less to do with the location itself and more to do with what the program chooses to do with the time it has. Most people who search for a yoga teacher training abroad have already decided they want to leave. The question they are

Darkness meditation is the practice of meditating in complete or near-complete visual isolation. By removing the brain's dominant external reference point, the practice brings attention into more direct contact with the movements of the mind, body, memory, emotion, fear, imagination, and awareness itself. The practice appears formally in Tibetan Buddhist dark retreat, Bön dark retreat, Taoist cave and inner alchemy traditions, and in the modern darkness retreat. The forms dif

A meditation retreat for beginners does not require prior meditation experience to be worthwhile. What it requires is a willingness to be present with yourself without escape routes. That is a different capacity. And it is one most people underestimate they already have. The question most people ask before their first retreat is some version of: Am I ready? What they usually mean is: Am I good enough at meditation? This is the wrong question. Not because readiness does not ma

A Group Meditating in One of Our Retreats The first thing most people notice, within a few hours of entering silence, is not peace. It is how much noise they were generating without knowing it. Not external noise. The noise inside. The running commentary, the half-finished arguments, the rehearsal of conversations that will never happen, the mental to-do list that keeps refreshing itself. All of that was always there. The silence of a retreat does not create it. It just remov

Somewhere in the middle of the first night, the to-do list runs out. Not because you've finished it. Because there's nothing to do. No phone to check, no room to rearrange, no distraction that fits through the crack under the door. Just you, the dark, and whatever was already in there waiting. Most people who ask about darkness retreat preparation are thinking about logistics: what to pack, what to eat beforehand, whether to bring a meditation cushion or a specific kind of pi

Pine Forest Meditation Mexico draws darkness retreat seekers for a reason. The country carries a deep, unbroken thread of indigenous spiritual practice. It has land that has been held as sacred for centuries, climates that slow the body down, and a culture that still understands the value of stillness. When you step into a darkness retreat here, the setting itself becomes part of the practice. At Hridaya Family, we offer the only dedicated darkness retreat facility in Chiapas

I've had the chance to explore darkness retreat meditation in depth over many years. My first retreat was in 2013, and in 2020 I spent more than a month in total darkness. Now I have the honour of hosting people in dark retreats here at The Hridaya Family Meditation and Yoga Retreat Centre in Chiapas, Mexico. In this article I'll share some of my experience and understanding of darkness retreats, along with what the research can—and cannot yet—tell us. There are centuries of

In this article we will dive into and hopefully clarify the role that psychotherapy can play on the path of awakening. Many spiritual teachers and schools look down upon therapeutic methods. Some even say that any work that focuses on personality level patterns is like “re-arranging the furniture in your prison cell, you think it makes you more comfortable but you are still trapped”. Here, we’ll present a radically different, much more inclusive vision of psychotherapy that i

This post is dedicated to the memory of Alix Angelelli—a beloved friend and a truly beautiful soul.

Some insights on practice and progress from half a lifetime of practice and 10 years of teaching

“You have an inclination: In the flash of one second, you feel what needs to be done. It is not a product of your education; it is not...