Online/MP3 meditation retreat of a day or two or more - is there such a thing?

[Sasha]

I'd like to go on a meditation retreat but I can't! I'm housebound for all but maybe an hour on an unpredictable good day so doing one of these anywhere except my apartment is sadly out of the question.

I did a little bit of meditating a couple of years ago - Jon Kabat-Zinn's MBSR course from his book and CDs - but got out of the habit so will more or less be starting from scratch. I like the idea of total immersion for a couple of days or so to kick-start myself on it again.

I've found an interesting book - Steve and Rosemary Weissman's '...with Compassionate Understanding: A Meditation Retreat' which looks as though you can kind of use it as the basis for a retreat (I think - I'm reading through my Kindle sample!) but ideally I'd like it via audio so that I've got more of a feeling of time structure and other people (virtually) doing it along with me.

Is there such a thing? I've looked on Amazon and googled a bit but can't find anything. Things calling themselves 'retreats' are often about an hour long, which is not my idea of a retreat! It's hardly my idea of a lunchbreak.

 

[Ember]

You've reminded me, Sasha, to tap into last month's WCCM (World Community for Christian Meditation) retreat. Thirty-five countries participated in the Bere Island Holy Week Retreat 2013 held in Ireland from 24th to 31th March:

The series consists of 14 videos: 12 talks by Fr. Laurence Freeman, drawing on the writings of St. Benedict and Shantideva, an Easter video allowing participants to send greetings to their communities around the world and a follow-up video recording the impressions of younger meditators.

According to Fr. Laurence, “Not all monks are meditators, but all meditators...are monks.” The form of meditation that he teaches uses a mantra. His discussion of “introversion” and “sloth” early in the retreat may take a little digesting. During the last half of the retreat, he focuses on the Easter story.

 

[Sasha]

Thanks, Ember - hope you enjoyed it!

I'm really looking for a non-religious, real-time retreat with somebody basically saying, 'now do this, now do that' for 15 hours a day or something. I suspect that that doesn't exist! There are plenty of meditation talks online - the lectures that people listen to during retreats at the beginning or end of the day when they're not meditating - but it's the actual timing and content of the meditations I'm after.

I think I'm going to have to resign myself to there being no such thing! In the meantime, I've ordered yet another two books on meditation from Amazon.