Silent Retreat December – PachaMama, Costa Rica

The Silent Retreat in December is a silent meditation retreat at PachaMama Eco Village & Retreat Center in Nicoya, Guanacaste, Costa Rica. It is meant for anyone who wants to set aside the usual noise and spend several days with the most earnest questions of the heart. The retreat is described as a call to focus on exactly that, in a beautiful, natural setting, with silence as the main practice.

What to Expect

The retreat is built around silence. There is no program of lectures or performances to follow. The invitation is to be quiet, stay with your own questions and see what comes up when nothing is asked of you. It sits at the end of the year, in the same part of the calendar as PachaMama's other December gatherings, but it is a different offering: inward, unhurried and simple.

Silent retreats suit people at different stages. Some come with a particular question they have been carrying. Others come simply to rest from speaking, and from the habit of explaining themselves.

The Setting

PachaMama is an eco village and retreat center near Nicoya, in the Guanacaste province of Costa Rica. It is known for its meditation retreats, and it also hosts yoga workshops, body cleanse programs, emotional healing workshops, Red Road ceremonies and musical journeys. Its programs are held in the tropical forest, and the center also keeps a jungle reserve with riverbanks. For a silent retreat, that setting does much of the work: birdsong, warm air and green surroundings give the silence something to rest in.

PachaMama closes for September and October, during Costa Rica's rainy season, and welcomes guests again from November. December falls within its regular season of gatherings.

Before You Go

A silent retreat asks for willingness more than experience. Whether you have sat for many years or are curious about extended silence for the first time, the main preparation is to arrive ready to be quiet, with your phone and your usual conversation set aside as far as you can.

If you are looking for a silent meditation retreat in Costa Rica, one that is centered on silence and the questions of the heart rather than on a busy schedule, this is one of the retreats offered at PachaMama in Nicoya. For anyone who wants a different kind of stillness, the center also offers Vipassana, in which stillness and awareness arise from simply sitting and watching what is.