10 days Vipassana meditation: Less stress, less drama. More inner peace.

I approached the 14.02.2017 with mixed feelings: Curiosity on the one side, disfavor on the other side. From here on there was no way back. I was stuck in the Sri Lankan jungle for 10 days - without my phone, my laptop, any books. I started doubting if the idea of doing a Vipassana meditation course was as great as it sounded three months ago...

Why I joined it in the first place? Because of the experience itself. I expected it to be sort of a mindset strengthening boot camp. Living a monk alike life for 10 days. Noble silence, no internet access and meditating for 10 hours per day. If I made it through that (as a millennial and digital influencer), I would have once again convinced myself that absolutely nothing and nobody - not even my mind - stands in my way towards an epic, sustainable life(style) of purpose.

What is Vipassana meditation?

Vipassana meditation is an ancient, more than 2500 years old, meditation technique that encourages us to see things as they really are, not how we want them to be. It embraces the art of truly living, in the here and now - not the past or future.

Practicing this technique will - at a certain stage - lead to a balanced mind, genuine happiness (joy) and the liberation from suffering. According to this school of thought, the end of suffering is achieved through eliminating mental impurities (e.g. hate, anger, jealousy). Vipassana is based on the idea that the root causes of our unhappiness are craving, aversion and ignorance.

To avoid misperceptions: Vipassana meditation is neither a cult, nor a religious act, nor intellectual entertainment. It also isn’t a holiday or an escape from everyday life. Let me draw a clearer picture of this concept for you by explaining how it works.

How does Vipassana work?

Practicing Vipassana meditation is a journey of self-transformation through self-exploration, self-work and self-observation. It allows you to experience the deep connection between your body and mind when you fully focus on the physical sensations on/in your body (e.g. itching, pain, pressure, pricking, warmth, respiration).

You will feel and understand the effect your body has on your mind and vice versa. Through this direct experience you will become (more) aware of your own thoughts, feelings, judgments and the pattern of your reactions, which result from that. In simpler words: You are confronted with the drama and pain you have created and keep on creating in your life

Not only that; through the realization that life is continuous change - as you will observe in/on your body - the vicious circle of unhappiness, drama etc. stops being an intellectually understood concept. It becomes an experience you went through. Because of your own observation and understanding of these correlations your suffering can be ended, which will reflect itself in a more peaceful, self-disciplined life.

What is the code of discipline? The course content?

The purpose behind all Vipassana dos and don't is to calm down the hyperactive mind. How? - It starts with the separation of women and men shortly after the arrival at the premises. Besides practicing noble silence and following the strict timetable, we were not allowed to

• steal, lie, kill any beings (mosquitos, spiders and plants included)
• use any drugs, intoxicants, tobacco
• have eye or any other physical contact with others
• read, write, listen to music, take photographs
• do yoga or any other physical exercises
• eat any other food that the provided one
• combine Vipassana with any other techniques, rites or forms of worship

Until day three we were told to focus our attention on our natural breath. Our task was to observe the flow of breath and the small area between our upper lip and nostrils. A borderline experiment...

If you made it through that (a few people had given up and left the course by then), your mind calmed down and stressed less. This is when we were taught the Vipassana technique, which is all about experiencing and observing sensations in/on our bodies. In a last step, we learned/mastered to sit still for 60 minutes without reacting to any pain (our feet and back got numb after approx. 35 minutes), noise, itching etc. That was a mind-blowing experience!

Who can participate?

Everyone. I met men and women, teenagers and seniors, people from all around the world from Canada to Australia. Muslims, Buddhists and Christians. All in all we were around 60 women and 20 gentlemen plus the teachers and service staff (approx. 15 individuals). The course was conducted in English and Sinhalese.

Courses take place in 173 centers and 134 non-centers all across the globe on five continents. More infos can be found here. The participation does not include any costs, you donate a certain sum that feels right to you at the end of the course.

How did a day look like? What about the premises?

An old, loud bell was rung every morning at 4am. At 4:30am we started meditating in the meditation hall for two hours -in a round, freestanding building in the middle of nowhere; accompanied by the sounds of geckos, squirrels, grasshoppers, birds and TucTucs as soon as the sun rose.

Eight Buddhist monks were meditating on the very left, followed by the male Vipassana students, a bit of space in the middle, then female Vipassana students on the right and three Buddhist nuns (one of them is my Facebook friend now) on the very right side. Everyone sat on his/her 80 cm long, blue thin mattress, two or more small cushions made the sitting more comfortable. The majority of us wore white long, linen clothes, which covered the shoulders and knees.

Breakfast was served at 6:30am in the main building. The room was furnished with 40 yellow tiny wooden tables and chairs. It looked a bit like in an elementary school classroom. Curtains separated 1/3 of the area, in which the male Vipassana students and staff enjoyed their meals. Also worth mentioning: Everyone had to clean his/her plates and cups on his/her own after (s)he finished his/her meals.

I know what all foodies reading this article think now: "How was the food?" - It was really delicious. Brown and white rice, Coconut Sambal and Dhal (sometimes some vegetarian curry); a baby banana, chocolate cookie and milk tea as a sweet ending for breakfast.

After a short rest (I mainly trained my braiding skills and looked for flowers to decorate my uncharitable "room" during that break) we continued meditating at 8am until 11am. Lunch was served at 11am - similar to our breakfast menu but with different vegetarian curries and various awesome cooked/fried local veggies I could not identify.

After another break, that I used for walks in the jungle and observing nature, further meditation sessions continued at 1pm and ended at 5pm. Tea time at 5pm reminded us that we made it through the toughest part of the day. I reflected on my lessons learned and created mental to-do-lists for my life after Vipassana (Touché!) for one hour after that, the third rest time of the day. At 6pm another one hour long meditation session followed.

My favorite part was the 1h and 20 min. long discourse at 7:10pm. A video of the leading Vipassana meditation teacher S.N. Goenka (1924 - 2013), a charismatic storyteller and edutainer, who reflected on our challenges, explained the technique and encouraged us to keep on working. The last meditation session took place from 8:30pm till 9pm. We were in bed by 9:30pm.

Two female Vipassana students shared a very simple room, separated by a baby blue curtain. Approx. eight male Vipassana students shared a room in contrast to that. The big room was separated into "mini rooms" through the same baby blue, thin curtains. I was told that this accommodation had a bit of an "army /third world country hospital flair". Poor guys!

What did I miss resp. did NOT miss?

 I missed watching sunsets and sunrises. We were meditating during that time. In addition to that, I also looked forward to laughing, listening to music and the opportunity to write things down (no paper and pens, remember?). After day 8 I started phantasizing about my fridge and oven. I really enjoy cooking and baking. It is an essential part of my life(style). My main struggle was the pain in my back, knees and buttocks though, which came and disappeared during the course.

Surprisingly, I really enjoyed not speaking, no social media, no phone and laptop. It felt like a holiday (I make a living as a public speaker and digital influencer, that must be the reason why.). Furthermore, waking up early wasn't a challenge either, as I do that since three years. Similarly, the thin mattress, cold showers and sharing a room with a stranger also weren't annoying. No meat and coffee for 10 days? No probs! And I throughoutly enjoyed the fact that I stayed in a make-up, accessories and high heels free zone. Very interesting insights...

What are my lessons learned?

I could write a whole blog post about my lessons learned. But I decided to focus on the following five insights instead:

• Life is continuous change. Everything is impermanent. Embrace this idea if you want to live a joyful, peaceful and balanced life.
• Until you learn to master your mind, life is a continuous process of self-inflicted pain, drama and suffering.
• Unhappiness comes from craving, ignorance and aversion. Self-observation and not reacting to those phenomenons will end this misery.
• Nobody will open the door to happiness for you. You need to open it on your own. Happiness is a result of continuous, determined self-work.
• We are strongly attached to our perceptions of ourselves (to the idea of "I" or "my"), without actually knowing what or who we are.

Would I do it again?

Yes, doing a Vipassana meditation course once or twice per year is a great reality check and source of rehabilitation. Nevertheless, it is absolutely unrealistic to expect that all of your problems will be solved after visiting the course. Moreover, you need to continue practicing the technique when going back to your "normal" life. The results also strongly depend on how disciplined you are willing to work. None can observe yourself for you. However, 10 days of Vipassana meditation initiated positive life changes for the majority of its participants:

For instance, I wrote down four pages of keywords with ideas, to-dos and elements I want to implement into my life after I was given back my laptop (already turned some into action by now). A friend of a friend quit his job, broke up with his girlfriend and started living a life of purpose. Furthermore, I read about a business owner of a SME who encourages all of his employees to participate in one Vipassana meditation course per year - paid leave (!) - as this experience so tremendously changed his life.

So when will you commit to your first course?