Doing a meditation retreat is actually a great way to get into meditation. I did a 5 day retreat having almost no experience beforehand, and it was a huge, huge help to me. Getting into meditation is hard, as it takes a long time to see real results, whereas with a retreat, you will definitely see results after a few days, which really helped motivate me to keep going. I'd also highly recommend the book Mindfulness In Plain English by Bhante Gunaratana. Very straightforward guide to meditation for people who haven't done it before.
