"Of course," I respond with a shrug, as if to say don't be ridiculous. Not leaving anything to chance, she taps the center of my forehead with her index finger.

"Now I'm going to teach you to breathe," she says. "All you have to do is clench up the spot between your navel, sex organs, and sphincter, and take the breath from there. It's easy." This is where the coiled serpent lives, she explains, the essence of my life force. I follow along as her eyes roll back into her head and soon we are both panting spasmodically like greyhounds after a race.

How I came to be at a lakefront ashram called Paradise Found, in B.C.'s Gulf Islands, is a little difficult to explain. To be clear, I am not someone who wears hemp-fiber Guatemalan peasant pants and has a favorite flavor of incense. I don't read the Bhagavad Gita, don't have prayer flags flapping from the antenna of my Subaru, and nothing can make me leave a room faster than the phrase "spiritual growth." When the daily grind gets me down, my solution has always been to head for the hills. There's no problem that a good day of climbing can't fix, and anybody who can stay depressed while paddling in the Pacific Ocean probably deserves to spend a million torturous hours in a yoga studio. New age escapism might be good for the masses, but I've always preferred my journeys to be real.

And yet lately, I've found that lighting out for the bush has become increasingly difficult. I've got three kids, two jobs, and a stack of bills that never gets any shorter. My life jacket hasn't been wet in a year and for the first time since I could walk, I just went an entire summer without sleeping on the ground even once. Meanwhile, my need for escape is undiminished: I've got insomnia, low-grade back pain, and stress leaking out of my eyeballs. I think my wife would agree that I am not always a pleasure to be around. It's a vicious cycle: as overcommitted as I am it's not exactly like I can nip off to the Yukon for a little peace and quiet whenever the mood strikes.

So one day, while looking at the boxes of camping gear mildewing in my basement, I realized that I needed to find a better way, a quick and dirty substitute for the weeks of backwoods wandering that got me through my twenties. With no small amount of dismay, I discovered that the language of the new-age bliss-monger is perilously close to that of the outdoor enthusiast. Get away from it all. Find peace and you will find yourself again. It occurred to me that the yogis were onto something. Wouldn't it be great if finding Nirvana didn't require plane tickets, new tele-skis, and every last one of my vacation days?

There's no point in half-assing one's way towards enlightenment, so I decide learn from the experts, which means, unfortunately, buying expensive plane tickets and using a few vacation days. I'm heading for B.C.'s Salt Spring Island, the epicenter of all things touchy-feely. The Paradise Found retreat offers five days of intense yoga, Sanskrit chanting, and complicated breathing exercises. Even better, the course is conducted entirely in silence-what better way to get in touch with my inner voice than by shutting the hell up for a change? And the idyllic setting promises to ease the culture shock as I shift my focus from the great outdoors to the uncharted territory of my own innards. By the end of the week at Paradise Found I want to be able to balance on one finger and clear my mind of all thought for weeks at a time. And levitate. Is that too much to ask?

I've just finished up a job on the Alberta border, so my journey begins inauspiciously, with a midnight drive in a rental car so tiny I have to remove my shoes in order to fit behind the wheel, followed by two hours of fitful sleep on the Vancouver floatplane dock. Over the phone the course leader had assured me that the "universe will get you here when you need to be here," but the people who make up airline schedules have a way of looking down their noses at karmic timetables.

The course had begun the previous night, so when I arrive the other five participants have already received their last verbal instructions and are well into their silent reverie. The course is led by Nomi Lyonns-also known as Sat Guru Lyons, according to the framed certificate on her wall. She is tall and fit, but without the in-your-face tautness of the typically flagrant yoga instructor. She leans forward and hustles me through a whispered crash course. Third eye: check. Sphincter breathing: check. I'm dubious, but I resolve to give the course my honest best effort. I will breathe deeper than I ever thought possible, keep my mind clearer, have better than 20/20 vision in my third eye...It's time to kick some ass in the chilling out department.

The building is about what you'd expect, with untreated wooden walls, soft carpets, and lots of throw pillows. The blades of the ceiling fan are shaped like banana leaves and the decorations are a mishmash of everything from multi-armed elephant statues to Egyptian cat heads and Japanese vases. Gimme an Eastern mystic, any old mystic will do. The main level has a yoga studio, a kitchen, and a few bedrooms. The downstairs has a massage table and a bunch of single mattresses partitioned off by sheets.

As promised, the setting is fantastic. The back deck overlooks Cusheon Lake, a pristine little gem whose shores are thick with stately maples and slender willows, their dagger-shaped leaves drooping onto the wide water-lilies below. The hills are fortresses of green, and the underbrush is thick with juicy blackberries. It's the kind of place I'd come for peace and reflection even if I wasn't trying to become a Zen master.

The other devotees greet me as warmly as they can without speaking, bobbing their heads like shorebirds. I desperately need a bathroom, so I mime a stream of urine and am directed to the right place. I've missed the morning yoga session; everyone else has been up since dawn, opening their pelvises and bathing in the pure sweet milk of karmic righteousness. I've got a hard enough task as it is, and coming in late isn't going to do me any favors in the peace department. It occurs to me that when it comes to cleansing, the only thing as good as silence is ritual fasting, and so I decide that for the remainder of the week, I will eat only the minimum number of calories necessary to sustain human life.

As your preschool teacher may have told you, silence is golden. But it is also complete bullshit. I have heard it said that the mind is a drunken monkey, and the oppressive quietude at Paradise Found is only helping me get in touch with the snockered gorilla inside my cerebellum. I should be drifting into oases of calm, but instead my inner voice is rattling the bars of its new cage. I spend hours inventing backstories for the other people on the course. What is undoubtedly a pleasant mother-daughter team becomes, in my mind, a criminally odd lesbian couple on the run from the law. One man, a smirking stockbroker type, lolls about on the floor reading yoga magazines. I feel an immediate distaste for him, and christen him Slouchy Loungebeast. Without talking, none of us have any basis on which to form a real relationship, though the silence does nothing to prevent me from making negative snap judgments about the people around me. To be honest, I feel more connected to the cab driver who picked me up at the ferry; at least he asked me how my day was going.

When I go for a walk, a burly highway worker silences his chain saw and bids me good morning. No doubt he senses in me a kindred spirit, what with my scraggly beard, sunburned neck, and a few bumps and scrapes that make it look as though I actually work for a living. But when I flash him the card Nomi provided, the one that says I have taken a vow of silence and thus will not be returning his friendly greeting, he pulls the saw's ripcord meaningfully, as if to suggest that what he'd really like to do is rip me limb from pansy limb. I can't blame the guy, so I slink back to the ashram and stare longingly at the lake, wondering why I wasted five days on enlightenment when I could have been swimming or hiking or doing...absolutely anything else at all.

When it comes time for the first yoga session, I pounce on the physical activity. One woman hands me a white bandana. I tie it around my forehead Rambo-style, but she wags her finger furiously until I reposition it into an Aunt Jemima kerchief. Why I am supposed to wear the bandana is never explained to me. Then again, nothing is ever explained to me. That's the thing about silence.

Nomi begins the yoga session with rapid hyperventilation known as Breath of Fire, the hallmark of Kundalini yoga. Nomi, who has a long and elegant nose to begin with, flares her nostrils and sucks wind like a marathoner. I do my best to mimic her Angry Celine Dion face and immediately feel lightheaded, which could be transcendence...or a result of eating only four blackberries for breakfast.

As it turns out, I suck at yoga. This is no surprise, as I suck at a great many things. But the enormity of my suck is staggering. There is not a single exercise I can complete with any grace whatsoever and it seems newly miraculous that I.ve been able to self-locomote for the last 30 years. It takes every ounce of concentration for me to follow along and it's only after an hour of contorting that I realize my monkey mind has ceased its yapping. There are no visions of cheque books dancing in my head, no thoughts of looming deadlines and uncompletable home repairs. In fact, the only time I've ever experienced this sort of pure, blank focus is when I'm about to drop into a rapid, or when I'm standing at the lip of a ski run a few notches above my ability. Moreover, despite my ineptitude, my body feels fantastic and exhausted, as if I'd spent the whole day trailrunning. This could really work!

The following morning, however, things are not so bright. Yoga is not for sissies; yoga kicks my butt. Whereas yesterday my body was as supple and delicious as a marshmallow, at today's 6 a.m. yoga session I am transformed into a Rice Krispie square, stiff and crackly, even a little stale. My range of motion is two degrees to either side of centre, and the speeds with which I can switch poses are slow, stop, and full-stop. When it's time to kneel, my joints pop like sonic booms. When it's time to stand up, I fall down in agony. Fortunately my longtime personal guru, Swami Ibuprofen 800, is a great help in such matters.

After two hours of yoga and chanting-which isn't considered talking, since it's non-communicative nonsense in a foreign language-it's time for me to ignore breakfast. This is fairly easy to do, since the cuisine is mostly quinoa and spirulina and such, a rogue's gallery of foods you vaguely know you should be eating but probably never will. I avail myself of a pitcher marked "chlorophyll water" which is a handy supplement for those among us who have the ability to photosynthesize. It tastes like what you would get if you ran iceberg lettuce through a juicer, though with slightly less nutritional value.

The days proceed with a structured sameness, and yet the road to Nirvana is paved with leisure time. Outside of the six daily hours of yoga, chanting, Angel Cards-don't ask-and spirit walks, we are left to our own devices. Since the punishing silence and earnestness are slowly driving out whatever small semblance of sanity I arrived with, I fill the downtime with an exhaustive program of outdoorsiness. Maybe, I think, if I transplant the valuable bits of the yoga and the concentration exercises into the woods, I can have the best of both worlds.

And so, whenever I get even 20 minutes to myself, I bushwhack into the dripping woods along Salt Spring's coastline. One cold morning, beneath a canopy of madrones with peeling, papery bark, I surprise a deer nestled into his daybed. It has a broken antler and regards me with a quizzical eye. And yet it doesn't bolt, though it is less than ten feet from me. No doubt it senses that the two of us were soul twins in a previous life. We share the moment, two sentient life forms exchanging the energy of peace.

But my favourite destination is Cusheon lake. I swim in its warm waters several times a day, and when I need extended sojourns I venture out in a small wooden rowboat named Jackie, with splintered oars that sit loosely in shrieking oarlocks. Early in the course I had hoped that I might be able to do full lotus on the rear gunwale and propel myself across the water by sheer force of goodwill. But as the course progresses I feel content simply working up a sweat as I row endless laps from one end of the lake to the other.

On day four, I row across the lake to a thicket of downed trees. The sky is a malevolent grey and a bitter wind eddies around me. In my newly emaciated state I am quickly chilled right through. It's no wonder that Gandhi chose such a warm country in which to undertake his hunger strikes.

A beaver interrupts my solitude, chattering his teeth at me and slapping his tail against the water. The beaver is perfect Zen, I think, able to live fully in the moment with no intrusive worries, no obsession over the future. The beaver has no monkey mind; the beaver has achieved nirvana. Then again, the beaver has a brain the size of a peanut and eats wood for a living. The beaver is an idiot.

I row back across the lake in time for dinner. With no talking, meal times are excruciating. Nomi sits with her eyes closed and back straight, appreciating the hell out of every single forkful. Without the salve of meaningless chitchat, it's like we're orbiting each other in tiny, fragile bubbles, afraid of being pierced by too much meaningful eye contact. The togetherness is overwhelming, and yet I've never felt so alone. When somebody drops a spoon we all nod and chuckle like lunatics on lunch break. At dinner on the final night, Slouchy Loungebeast has trouble cutting a piece of cake and oh, we laugh for an hour over that one. Seriously.

The cake in question is my birthday cake, and my mute teammates treat me to a silent, antic rendition of "Happy Birthday" made all the more bizarre by the fact that none of them know my name. I clasp my hands in thankful prayer and salute each of them in turn, my monkey mind howling at me to flee.

I head for bed feeling tired and dispirited. The yoga has been equal parts pleasure and pain; the chanting has provided momentary bursts of empty-mindedness, but I don't exactly see myself doing an hour of it every morning. And the silence, rather than being liberating, has only intensified the background negativity jabbering away at the edges of my mind. The biggest revelation of the week is that my parents must be made of stronger stuff than I thought to have survived the self-help Seventies relatively unscathed. Nomi is a good and caring person, and the other participants are getting a tremendous amount out of this week. For all my cynicism, I realize that what I'm really feeling is jealousy. How come they get to achieve inner peace when I am apparently condemned to a lifetime of monkey mind? Nirvana is a bitch that way.

At two in the morning I come wide awake, feeling loose and easy despite the evening's punishing yoga session. All is quiet save for the rhythmic snoring of the Loungebeast. I walk down to the dock in my underpants and carefully unhook the mooring rope on little Jackie. I pour water over the oarlocks to keep them from squeaking, and push out onto the water beneath the red glow of the moon. The air smells like smoke and a steady breeze breaks the surface of the lake, sending a thousand identical contour lines marching towards the shore. The maples crowd the banks, casting starlight shadows into the night. A mother duck glides effortlessly past my bow, her four ducklings struggling to keep pace. They look delicious; my stomach growls.