The idea of a meditation retreat is deeply romantic, but the reality can be very different.

Hi, it's Rohan, your host of Meditative Story, and this week is another of my solo episodes.

And today, instead of reflecting on what's happening right now in the story of my life,

I wanted to go back a little bit in time to the first meditation retreat I ever went on.

You really don't need to go on retreats to get a lot out of meditation, but it can help.

Especially if you want to get deeper into things, which as a younger man I absolutely did.

I first got into mind for a meditation when I was 22, and I guess you could say I went deep quite quickly.

Because over the next five years I think I spent almost a year on retreats.

Some were long, some were shorter, some were far from home, with trips to the US and south and south East Asia.

But it was closer to home, at a monastery north of London where it all started.

As it happens, my retreat adventures came pretty close to ending there too, but we'll get to that.

That's me warmed up, ready to tell my story.

How about you?

Relaxing the body, knowing your signature areas of tension, for me it's the shoulders, the jaw.

Deliberately softening those areas, your areas, and letting any release you feel flow through the rest of your body.

The body relaxed.

Enjoying breathing, not breathing in any particular way other than how you already are.

This rhythm, this process that is always here, an essential part of life,

kissing it with our attention, the body breathing, calling in the senses.

For me, a lot of mindfulness is about being intimate with environment around us,

and how we know our environment is through our senses.

Feeling touch, hearing sounds, knowing smells, tastes, and seeing that which is here to be seen.

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