Online Vipassana-Retreat or how the CoVID-Lockdown has improved the quality of my life

During the Corona-Crisis I decided to minimize the risk of infection by being absolutely compliant to the government regulations: not using the public transport but instead discovering the surroundings of my little village located above the Zurich lake on foot or by bike. During my half-day trips, not being stimulated by the marvelous lakes, waterfalls and snowy mountain peaks which I am lucky to observe during almost all my previous hiking activities, the forest-covered hills located close-by did not manage to take my breath away, making me start pondering about the sense of my life, regretting the past mistakes and worrying about all possible troubles of the future, while I was actually trying to be present and enjoy the nature. Attempting to distract myself from all these thoughts in my head, I frequently seeked relief by checking my phone, synchronizing the emails, messaging to my friends and family on whats app and looking for sportswear on amazon.

On one of such jogging/hiking tours, I decided to check whether there would be a possibility to register for a Vipassana-retreat at one of the meditation centers located in Switzerland on Beatenberg (https://www.karuna.ch/). The curiosity about the practice of mindfulness arouse in me many years ago, while I was working in the psychiatric hospital, dealing with depressed patients, observing the side effects of medication and being keen on finding out more about alternative treatments. As expected, on the website of the meditation center, I found that all live events were cancelled due to the lockdown with no certainty about the date of reopening. However, and I could not believe my eyes, they were offering online meditation retreats, which give a possibility to participate to people located far away and booking on short notice, since there need not be space limitations if one joins from home.

Beatenberg is just one of dozen retreat centers located around Switzerland, but the one to which I feel an emotional connection due to 2 reasons: 1. from the top of Beatenberg, next to the turquois-colored lake Brienz, one can see the snowy peak of the majestic Jungfrau mountain (and the famous Eigernordwand) in its whole beauty and, 2. I jumped off Beatenberg with a paraglider last summer, which, until now, was one of the greatest experiences in my life.

Many people who want to register for a Vipassana-Retreat realize that even if there are so many all over the world, these are often fully booked right after the opening of the registration and sometimes it is quite hard to make a commitment to 10 full days half a year or a year in advance. So this opportunity to participate in a retreat at home and be able to sleep in my own bed, eat my own food and log out of the online sessions whenever I feel like it without disturbing other participants or giving explanations to spiritual teacher as seemed absolutely perfect for a beginner like me.

The retreat took approximately 3 full days, with meditations starting at 7 in the morning and ending at 9pm with 2 online meditation sessions in between and an evening lecture. I had a feeling, during these 3 days I learned more than during the last 3 years of my life. I am just a beginner and I do not claim to understand the practice even to a small extent, but already now, I realized my mind was, and most probably still is, full of misconceptions and destructive habits.

First, every time I felt lonely, sad or treated unfairly (and believe me, this happened a lot during the last few weeks), I was punishing myself for not being able to control my feelings, constantly replaying in my mind, how I should feel instead, what I should have done differently to not let these feelings arise and what I would want to do different in the future. The practice of Vipassana teaches to accept how you feel in the present moment and relate your feelings to your bodily sensations and to your thoughts, rather than to yourself as an individual. Negative emotions and pain are part of everybody`s life and not they alone, but more so the combination of tdenial and struggling against them is what leads to suffering. One simply needs to realize, that funny as it is, feeling no negative emotions or sensations is a characteristic of dead people.

Second, most people I know, me including, tend to live in the past and the future, instead of the present. Michel de Montaigne once said: “My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.” I have read multiple books on how to stop worrying, like for example by Dale Carnegie: “How to stop worrying and start living”. Rarely, they mention meditation, most of them recommend the same things: distraction and physical activity. Rarely, they discuss observing your own emotions and being curious about the bodily sensations evoked by them. Books on mindfulness and meditation are less popular and among my friends and colleagues I hardly encounter anyone who is interested in this topic, complaining about the lack of time as an excuse. Surprisingly, similarly to Elon Musk and Bill Gates, they all have 24 hours a day, making devoting 30min a day to mindfulness a matter of perspective. What one need to realize: Life is simply too short to be spending it in the past or the future. The past you will not be able to change anyway and the future is not there yet. Moreover, as the current Corona-crisis has demonstrated, it might be very different from what one expects.

Third: the mind is a crazy monkey on stimulant drugs, running around without a certain goal and craving for attention and food. Moreover, this monkey is a not a fast learner, skeptical to criticism and stuck to its habits. It willingly welcomes all distractions the environment or even the own thoughts have to offer and is very resistant to any of your attempts to calm it down. The moment you sit down and try to observe your breath, the monkey panics and urges you to stand up, change your posture, pay your bills, purchase an item online, write a message to your friends or, if it is not a physical action, you start planning your future or ruminate about the past. And the more you try to focus on your breath and ignore your thoughts, the more difficult it seems to do so. Your heartbeat goes up, you tense your shoulders, you start to feel the sweat on your forehead. What one feels is a normal stress reaction. Stress is good for us, at least it used to be, back in times when Australophiticus was wandering the Savanna looking out for food and being aware of predators like lions and cheetahs. The sooner we were able to activate our fight-or-flight system by raising the cortisol and adrenalin levels upon spotting a dangerous animal, the better were the survival changes. Funny enough, we feel the same response when we are standing in a traffic jam being late for work, or before we enter the room for an important job interview. Even if we understand, that the stress is not reasonable, we are still unable to deal with it. So what is the solution? The answer to stress lies in the attitude to it. Next time you feel your heart pounding and your breath becoming more frequent, be thankful to your body for preparing you to focus and deal with a stressful situation by activating your resources.

Forth: Practice! All of us agree that having a nice well-toned body requires many hours of physical workout. When it comes to our mind, we expect that it will change its habits and directions as soon as we desire so. This is a big mistake; I would rather say a huge one. Having a PhD in neuroscience, having given lectures on neuroplasticity for the last 2 years, and investigating the effects of cognitive training on the mind, I know better than many others that it might take hours, weeks, months and even years of practice to see even small changes in the brain. Little did I know, when not long ago I was expecting to see results right away and decided that meditations might be nothing for me, but for people who can calm down their mind. The funny thing is those, who are calm and accepting are probably already mindful. My teacher Yuka Nakamura has yesterday mentioned, that 10 000 hours of mindfulness meditation is a minimal time you should devote to this practice before calling yourself an expert.

So, my next meditation session will follow today and my next retreat will take place in a couple of weeks.