A Kind of Hush

Silent retreats are generating buzz among stressed-out charity workers and a few foundations

Four years ago Steve Jenkins felt overwhelmed by his job helping immigrant garment workers in New York.

The solution, he decided, was to find some serious peace and quiet. Taking the advice of a friend,

Mr. Jenkins, who worked as an organizer at Make the Road by Walking, a workers’ rights group with headquarters in Brooklyn, N.Y., signed up for a two-week silent retreat at the Insight Meditation Society, in Barre, Mass.

It didn’t take long, recalls Mr. Jenkins, before he began to wonder just what he had gotten himself into. Days at the remote retreat center in the woods of central Massachusetts began at 5 a.m., and participants would meditate throughout the day, breaking only for meals and sleep. Even eye contact between people at the center was discouraged.

“The first few days were really rough,” recalls Mr. Jenkins. “I didn’t find not talking so hard, but meditating for 15 hours a day was relentless.”

But he stuck with it, and by the time the retreat concluded, Mr. Jenkins says, he felt transformed.

“It changed everything about the way I see myself and my work,” he says. “I realized that the things that were driving me weren’t necessarily aspirations for a just world, but anger and fear.”

The experience led him on another quest: for a new job.

“The retreat helped me to see that I needed to find something that would give me more balance in my life,” says Mr. Jenkins, who now works as the research director at Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ, which represents 85,000 service workers in six states and in Washington.

Mr. Jenkins also resolved to make silent meditation a regular part of his life. He participated in 10 more silent retreats, has become a student at the Zen Center of New York City, and meditates every day.

“I’m much more aware now of what’s going on in my own head,” says Mr. Jenkins. “I’m living in the moment in a way that I couldn’t before.”

Silence, Please

Silent retreats are just one part of a restorative regimen that is loosely referred to as “contemplative practices,” and they are gaining favor not just with charity officials but also with foundations, which are increasingly willing to finance such retreats in the hope they will allow nonprofit workers to recharge.

In recent years, foundations, including Ford and Nathan Cummings, have steered hundreds of thousands of dollars to organizations that offer silent retreats and other spiritual timeouts.

Still, while the retreats may be emerging as a trendy balm for the nerves of frazzled charity workers, they are not for everyone. Some activists who have sought out peace and quiet find that the retreats do not necessarily give them what they need to better serve their causes.

Religions including Buddhism, Christianity, and Judaism have long traditions of encouraging silent meditation and contemplation among their followers. But the retreats are also growing popular with many secular Americans, leading to a boom in the number of options now available.

Some people choose remote meditation centers, while others go to high-end desert spas or silent bed-and-breakfasts (where vegetarian food and lots of quiet are on the menu). Silent retreats lasting from a few days to a few weeks are now on offer in virtually every part of the country.

‘Like a Little Hermit’

While nobody collects data about just who is signing up for these retreats, anecdotal evidence indicates that they hold a special appeal for charity workers. Such employees often find themselves in positions that demand deep commitment but offer little remuneration, says the Rev. Lois F. Rose, director of the nonprofit East Mountain Retreat Center, in Great Barrington, Mass.

“What happens with a lot of people in philanthropic jobs is that they tend to get burned out,” says Ms. Rose, who has operated the intimate retreat center in the Berkshire Mountains for the past 10 years and regularly greets nonprofit workers who come for spells of silence lasting from two days up to two weeks.

Unlike more structured retreats where meditation is mandated, visitors here set their own agendas; they can spend their time reading, writing in journals, walking in the woods, even bicycling.

“Your time is your own,” she says. “The only rule is that you need to pick up supper between 6 and 8.”

Even a few days of silent contemplation can work magic on harried charity workers, says Ms. Rose.

“They come here feeling overcommitted and frustrated, and this is a place where they can be like a little hermit,” she says. “What we offer isn’t just a rest but the spiritual tools that can help them deal with stress and burnout when they’re not here.”

A Chance to Refuel

Her sentiments are echoed by Bob Agoglia, who this year became director of the nonprofit Insight Meditation Society — one of the oldest silent retreat centers in the country — after a long career working in health-care charities.

Mr. Agoglia, who formerly served as the director of the Association for Community Living, a charity that assists mentally retarded children and adults in western Massachusetts, participated in his first silent retreat at Insight’s Barre, Mass., facility in 1980 and has returned every year since then.

“For me, having this time to be contemplative helps me reconnect with my motivation and my compassion for people who are suffering,” says Mr. Agoglia, who joined the retreat center’s board of directors in 2001. “A lot of us who work in the nonprofit sector are there because we want to correct an injustice. But if the only thing that fuels you as a worker is success you’re going to get burned out. Anger isn’t going to do it either. If that’s all you’ve got, you’re going to run out. It really needs to go deeper than that.”

Making Connections

While some nonprofit employees see silent retreats as a respite from their busy careers, others experience them as a kind of work, albeit a much quieter version.

“I was struck by how much you can get done in terms of building a relationship without talking,” says Simon Greer, head of the Jewish Funds for Justice, in New York.

Mr. Greer participated in a weeklong retreat in 2004 at the Elat Chayyim Center for Jewish Spirituality, which is now located in Falls Village, Conn. “I felt at that retreat some connection to people and the world that was bigger than myself,” he says.

In addition to learning something about himself — “It was shocking to me that I could be quiet for seven days,” notes Mr. Greer — he says that the week of meditation, prayer, and classes on Jewish spirituality helped him understand the importance of silence within his own religion.

“I’d done some Zen meditation in the past, but I always felt like a visitor,” he says.

And while that week of silence has since receded into the background of a busy life, Mr. Greer says that he continues to draw upon the lessons he learned at Elat Chayyim: “It changed the way I approach my work.”

One example: the battles over “turf” that are so common in the social-justice world.

“If I can stay connected to my sense of being part of something bigger, it shifts that orientation,” he says. The realization that he was comfortable being quiet has also led him to change his priorities. “I’m much more conscientious about not filling up the days and my brain with a lot of noise,” says Mr. Greer.

As for attending another silent retreat, he says that he would love to repeat the experience over and over again — as soon as he finds the time. Meanwhile, he mediates four to five days a week.

Sustaining Activists

Claudia Horwitz, a longtime social activist, is a big believer in the restorative power of silence: She recently completed a three month-long retreat in India.

The director of Stone Circles, a Durham, N.C., nonprofit organization that seeks to sustain activists through spiritual training, Ms. Horwitz argues that people who work for charities may benefit most from retreats that are specifically designed for them.

“Attending a meditation center can be very powerful but also somewhat individualistic and isolating,” says Ms. Horwitz.

In response to what they saw as a growing demand, Ms. Horwitz and her associate, Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey, have developed a silent retreat for people who work in the nonprofit field, specifically charities with a social-justice focus.

The retreat, called “Being Change: the Way of the Activist,” takes place at the Vallecitos Mountain Refuge, in Taos, N.M., and Angels’ Rest Retreat and Conference Center, in Leyden, Mass.

Participants spend half of the day in silence — mornings are spent doing yoga and meditating — and the other half enjoying free time and attending discussions on social-change work.

“People come to us and they’ve been working too hard and they’re in search of some kind of spiritual experience that has some depth to it,” says Ms. Horwitz. “That’s what we try to help them reach: some deep form of spiritual engagement. If we’re interested in liberation in the world, then we need to be able to cultivate a sense of freedom on the inside. Silent practice is one of the most potent and powerful ways to do that.”

A Quiet Trend

A small but growing group of philanthropists seems to agree with Ms. Horwitz.

In recent years several foundations have been quietly supporting her organization and others like it that provide a whole range of so-called “contemplative practices” for charity workers.

The efforts are being led by foundation employees who say that they themselves have experienced the rejuvenating power of meditation and silent retreats.

“Our trustees know from their own experience that these practices offer access to interior resources that can help people avoid burnout,” says Peter Teague, program director for environment and contemplative practice at the Nathan Cummings Foundation, in New York. “Giving people an opportunity to stop and let their minds get quiet can help them become more compassionate, more centered, better colleagues, and ultimately better social activists.”

Mr. Teague notes that his foundation steers about $350,000 a year to support retreat centers, develop programs, and provide scholarships to enable charity workers to participate in such retreats.

By providing resources for spiritual activities, the foundations want to do more than simply provide much-needed breaks for the harried employees of charities. Instead, Cummings, the Ford Foundation, the Fetzer Institute, and several smaller foundations believe that meditation and silent retreats may enable more innovative nonprofit work.

“Ultimately these programs can help nonprofit leaders make new connections and spark new ideas about how to work together more effectively to achieve common goals,” says Michael A. Edwards, director of governance and civil society at the Ford Foundation, which provides financial support to organizations including Stone Circles, the Rockwood Leadership Institute, in Berkeley, Calif., and the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, in Northampton, Mass. “We think that reflective and contemplative practices can provide leaders with an important opportunity to build communications skills, reach across differences to find new partners, and develop stronger and more dynamic organizations and coalitions.”

While some people might argue that it would be better to focus on ways to reduce the stresses on nonprofit workers, supporters of silent retreats say that no matter what is done to improve working conditions at charities, breaks will always be necessary.

“Of course we need to look at the conditions that create stress, but stress comes from inside and outside,” says Thomas F. Beech, president of the Fetzer Institute, a nonprofit operating foundation in Kalamazoo, Mich.

If you deal only with the outside sources, you’re only dealing with part of the problem,” says Mr. Beech, who tries to participate in a silent retreat each year. “This is a way for all of us to rediscover and reconnect with the values that guide us and the motives that are behind the decision we make.”

Wanted: Noise

Not everyone believes that silent retreats and related forms of contemplative practice represent a cure-all for anxious, overworked charity employees. Kent Lebsock, founder of the American Indian Law Alliance, attended one such retreat at the urging of friends in 1999 at the Vallecitos Mountain Refuge and recalls the experience with amusement.

“This was a Buddhist retreat led by a Buddhist monk, and I started out by announcing that I had absolutely no intention of becoming a Buddhist,” says Mr. Lebsock, who lives in New York. “I don’t think anyone believed I could stay silent for 10 days, but I did.”

He likens the experience to the 12-step programs undertaken by recovering addicts: “You go through the various stages of anger and resistance. The first few days I was absolutely furious at the process. I remember thinking, ‘How dare these people think they know more than me?’ Then there’s grief, then finally surrender and calm.”

While he says that he has no regrets about participating in the retreat, it was an experiment that he has no desire to repeat. What’s more, the days of silent meditation didn’t help him deal with the stress of leading a nonprofit organization.

“The thing about silent retreats is that they’re very internalized. If I’m in need of revitalization, I go back to my own community,” says Mr. Lebsock, who is a Lakota Indian.

Recently, however, he has been doing a lot of quiet contemplation. In October, he left the American Indian Law Alliance after 15 years and is in the process of deciding what to do next. And while plenty of activists might regard a silent retreat as the best way to answer such questions, Mr. Lebsock believes another approach might be more helpful to him.

“I’m going through a lot of changes right now,” he says. “I think I could really use a noisy retreat.”