Mindfulness retreats in Portugal, and what we actually teach

A mindfulness retreat usually means one of two things: a residential course in the secular, clinically studied kind of mindfulness that came out of MBSR, or a Buddhist retreat teaching sati, the quality of attention. Cave of the Heart Retreats runs neither. We mainly run Hridaya silent meditation retreats at Karuna Retreat Center in Monchique, in the Algarve, Portugal. We have never called them mindfulness retreats, and the word appears nowhere else on this website.

What people mean by a mindfulness retreat

The clinical sense. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction was developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn in 1979 at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. It runs as an eight-week course with weekly group sessions of about two and a half hours, one day-long retreat, and around forty-five minutes of daily practice at home. It teaches the body scan, sitting meditation, gentle mindful movement, and loving kindness. It is explicitly secular, one of the largest non-religiously based mindfulness programmes in the world, and it rests on medical and psychological research. A great deal of good has come from it.

The Buddhist sense. Sati is the Pali word that "mindfulness" translates, and it belongs to the Buddhist path, where right mindfulness is one factor among several. Retreats in that lineage, including the Vipassana courses in the tradition of S. N. Goenka, teach it as part of a whole and coherent training. We have written about how those retreats and ours differ.

The loose sense. A wellness week with some meditation in it, a yoga holiday with a quiet hour, a spa with a gong. Nothing wrong with any of that, but it is a different kind of week.

Why we do not call ours a mindfulness retreat

We do not teach MBSR. We are not clinicians, and our retreats are not a medical intervention. And we do not teach sati within the Buddhist path.

What we teach is Hridaya meditation, which comes from the non-dual traditions, mainly the inspiration of Ramana Maharshi and yogic teachings. Our retreats also find inspiration in other traditions, such as Kashmir Shaivism, Christian mysticism and Sufism. We describe all of it on our Hridaya meditation page.

What is genuinely the same

Awareness is the path in both. Both ask you to stop adding to experience and to look at what is actually here. Both work with the breath and with the body, though Hridaya meditation invites us to go beyond them. Both are learnable by anyone, and neither asks you to believe anything in order to begin.

Both practices usually bring calmness to the mind. If you already practise mindfulness meditation, it will help you, and it will give you a strong foundation in our retreat.

What is actually different

What the attention is pointed at. Mindfulness practice attends to experience: sensations, thoughts, sounds, the breath, whatever is arising, observed without adding to it. In Hridaya we practise Self-Inquiry. The attention turns the other way and looks for the one who is aware. The question is not what is happening, but who is aware of it.

Ramana Maharshi put it plainly: in any practice the mind is going to be gathered and fixed on one thing, so it may as well be fixed on the one who is aware. We quote him on this in our post on jnana yoga, and how the turning is actually practised is described in our post on Self-Inquiry.

The emphasis on the Heart. We know the power of a practice that combines both the calming of the mind and the openness of the Heart. Love, sacredness, beauty and the other qualities of the Heart are of great support in the spiritual journey. An approach with heart, fully felt, opens a different depth than just calming the mind.

Our retreats are an invitation to discover the Stillness of your own being and to fall in love with it. When you become intimate with the Stillness of your own Heart, it has a far greater potential to fill your life with Stillness than the use of a technique.

What a day here actually holds

The shape is the same whichever length you sit: roughly five and a half hours of sitting meditation spread across the day in segments, an hour and a half of Hridaya Hatha Yoga, and talks and question and answer sessions. It runs in continuous silence, meals included, from the first morning sitting to the final morning.

In practice the day is held by a few simple things. A gong sounds before each sitting and you walk to the hall with the Monchique hills going through their own changes of light, mist in the valleys early, the ridges hard and clear by the middle of the day. Shoes are left at the door. Inside, cushions, benches and chairs are set out together, and you take whichever one lets you sit with a straight spine and a soft face, changing it as often as you need to. Meals are eaten in silence, and there is no small talk to prepare for or recover from. Questions are written on a slip of paper and left in a bowl, and the teacher answers them out loud in the next session.

We describe a full day hour by hour in what to expect on a silent meditation retreat, and the silence that holds it in noble silence, or mauna.

Whether this is what you were looking for

If you want a quiet week with some meditation in it and time by a pool, this is not it. The silence here is not a feature that can be removed.

If mindfulness brought you as far as noticing your thoughts, and something in you has started asking who is doing the noticing, then this may be exactly it. What is the source from which thoughts arise? What is your most intimate nature?

If through the practice of mindfulness you have started to discover the silent witness, or started to open to a beautiful Stillness, you might want to explore ways to relate directly with them. Self-Inquiry invites us to find a direct experience of the essence of our being, without relying on a particular external object of concentration.

Beginners are welcome at every length we run, and if this would be your first silent retreat our honest guide for beginners goes through the concerns people actually raise. The Retreat Guidelines are worth reading before you book rather than after.

Dates are on our silent meditation retreats in Portugal page.

Frequently asked questions

Is a Hridaya retreat a mindfulness retreat?

No. Mindfulness has two established meanings, the secular MBSR tradition and the Buddhist sati, and we teach neither. We teach Hridaya meditation, which comes from the non-dual traditions and rests on awareness of the Heart centre, awareness of the pauses in the breath, and Self-Inquiry. We describe the method in full on our Hridaya meditation page.

What is the difference between mindfulness and meditation?

Mindfulness is one kind of meditation, a particular quality of attention to present experience. Meditation is the wider word, covering many methods from many traditions, including concentration practices, devotional practices, inquiry and rest in awareness itself.

Do I need mindfulness experience to come?

No. Beginners are welcome at every length we run and everything is taught during the retreat. If you already have a mindfulness practice you will find the sitting familiar, and your previous experience could be supportive during the retreat.

Do you offer MBSR?

No. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction is an eight-week clinical programme developed at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, taught by certified teachers. We are a small meditation school and we do not teach it. We teach meditation and yogic practices.

Will a silent retreat reduce my stress?

Most people leave calmer than they arrived, and days of silence do rest a tired nervous system. But we do not offer the retreats as stress reduction and we make no clinical claims.

Is this a Buddhist retreat?

No. Hridaya draws mainly on the non-dual traditions, on Ramana Maharshi and the yogic tradition. Like most serious meditation traditions it is non-sectarian, and it asks you to adopt no belief. If you are weighing us against a Buddhist silent retreat, our post on Vipassana and Hridaya sets the two side by side.

Is the retreat religious?

It is not affiliated with any religion and nothing is asked of your beliefs. But the language is not neutral: we speak of the Heart, of the sacred, of the divine, and we quote mystics from several traditions. If you would prefer language stripped of all of that, a secular mindfulness retreat will suit you better.

Where in Portugal is it?

At Karuna Retreat Center in the Monchique mountains, in the Algarve, about an hour from Faro airport. Details and dates are on our silent meditation retreats in Portugal page.

With Love, the Cave of the Heart Team