What I learned from 10 days of silence, and 100 hours of meditation

The first time I heard of vipassana was 6 years ago, on my last day in Nepal. Before heading to the airport, I made one last stop at a local bakery, one out of many in the small streets of Thamel, Kathmandu. There I met a bunch of strangers who were straight out of their Vipassana course. All I knew about their experience then is that they spent ten days of their lives in full silence, meditating for ten hours each day. 

At the time, the idea of going through something this extreme appealed to me. However, in the past years, I was never ready to give up my vacation days and trips to explore the outside world, to journey inward. With all the seismic gentle shifts that are happening in my life and all the work I have been doing on myself, It wasn’t until this year that I became ready for this adventure, and the stars aligned and made it happen. 

My journey with meditation started in Nepal 6 years ago when I had a transcendental experience on the outskirts of Kathmandu with a bunch of strangers who found each other through visiting the same sound healer. However, despite the depth of that experience, I never considered the importance of building a meditation practice. It took me 5 years, a few mental health challenges, a therapy journey, a craving to connect to something bigger than myself, and devouring all things self-help which recommend meditation for productivity and calmness, to start my regular meditation practice on January 1st, 2020.

In the past ten months of regularly practicing meditation, I got introduced and practiced different meditation techniques. On any given day, I did any of the following things, I either focused on my breath, or scanned my body, I could have connected to the field of energy around me, or visualized through my meditations, that not to mention sound healing meditations. Throughout the process, I went from meditating for ten minutes every day to meditating for one or two hours regularly. In the process, I became calmer, I learned to observe my thoughts and not become my thoughts. I became more in tune with the world around me, connected to the beauty everywhere I go, and sharper with my focus and productivity. However, meditation was not a magic bullet that solved everything for me. It just improved the quality of my life substantially but not fully. I was still restless sometimes and numb some other times. So when I signed up for Vipassana, I didn’t know what to expect. I thought Vipassana would be a more intense version of what I had already been experiencing. Boy, I was wrong. 

When one decides to go through the vipassana experience, they agree that they will follow the rules that are put in place to achieve the desired outcomes of that journey. For ten days, we are not allowed, to speak, make eye contact, eat outside of the time dedicated for our vegetarian breakfast (6,30 am), lunch (11 am), and snack (5 pm), kill any creature, consume any alcohol, engage in any sexual activity or lie. 

Not knowing what I signed up for, on my first day of the course, I learned that the aim of Vipassana technique is to purify the mind. In the teacher’s words, what we go through is a surgical operation to the mind to uproot the deepest impurities, limiting beliefs, negativities or defilements by focusing and sharpening our mind to experience mind and matter through the framework of the body. In less abstract words, the entire experience is designed to reduce the distractions, and get us to focus our attention equanimously on the sensations of our body from head to toe. As the sensations of our bodies are directly connected to our mind, our dedicated attention towards them helps release what is stored in our subconscious mind. 

This ten days of sitting still without back support, waking up at 4 am every morning, and meditating for ten hours each day, is one of the hardest things I’ve put myself through, and with every hard thing we go through, great lessons come out. Here is what I learned:

• The only way out is through: While this sentence has been my motto for the past two years, going through vipassana allowed me to experience this truth differently. For ten days, I was witness to the memories that were flashing me back and the nightmares that were paying me a visit almost every night. As I was going through the process of release and purging, whatever needed to come to the surface was coming to the surface and all I had to do is witness it, observe it, and let it pass. On the other side of discomfort, there is truth. The course is nothing but a reflection and mirror of life, when life gets hard, the only way out to the other side is through. 
• We can only go as deep as we are ready to: When we start learning and practicing vipassana on day 5, we are asked to notice sensations, pleasant and unpleasant, gross and noticeable, throughout the body. The more we meditate, the more we realize sensations come and go, and at some point we are able to scan the body in free flow. When that happens, it means there is a wave of release that has happened through body and mind. As we continue to practice, we notice new waves of sensations come up again. It is our ability to uproot the first layers from our subconscious that has given rise to deeper layers that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to release. The lesson that I take with me to the outside world is the patience to see things through. Not only that, the patience to see the expected and unexpected through. My work, vocations, and passions will/might unfold beyond my wildest imagination sometimes. I just need to follow, surrender, and trust.
• Wisdom lives in us (in our bodies): In a way, vipassana teaches us to become our own detectives or researchers of the truth within. It offers an invitation to explore the truth that is experienced within us, not only the truth forced or shared by sources outside of ourselves. In the process, We observe how the mind influences our body, and how the body influences the mind. It is in our dedication to observing, that the truth about ourselves becomes apparent. In simpler words, we observe our cravings and our aversions to what shows up in our lives. We observe how our reactions manifest in the body and from there we realize some truth regarding our source of suffering. I don’t claim to understand fully how the technique works, but I’ve seen glimpses of how that works in my life, between my body and mind. If anything, vipassana taught me to trust myself and my experiences more in all areas of my life, including work, and to explore embodiment more.
• Silence Speaks: My relationship with silence has been building up over time mainly through my movement meditation practice and living/thriving alone in quarantine for 4 months. Dancing stillness in 5 rhythms taught me to tune in and listen carefully, attentively and gently to my intuition and gut feeling. However, dwelling in silence without distractions for 10 days is a totally different experience. It wasn’t my intuition that was speaking to me but my subconscious mind which was purging and bringing to the surface layers and layers of what’s stuck and held in it and in my body. In theory, silence is not a state that’s only accessible in a 5 rhythms class, or in a meditation course. Silence and stillness exist moment to moment in my daily life, while I am washing my hands, speaking to my coworkers. That intense state of silence invited me to invite more silence into my life but also to hear the stillness between words, the words between words, and be present with what is in all sorts of relationships and actions in my life.
• We are our own healers: Vipassana is about bringing the power back to ourselves and taking ownership of our lives. The technique is designed to eradicate suffering and purify the mind and provide an alternative to giving our power to what’s outside of us. Outside of the space of working with our suffering or healing, vipassana was a reminder of the power that exists within but also a reminder to know when to ask for help. 
• Aniche Aniche Aniche: I can’t remember how many times the main teacher repeated those words over and over again. The gist of it is everything is passing. Pleasant sensations, unpleasant sensations, they all are passing. It was hard to believe that, when I was in excruciating pain sitting for ten hours without back support. But the truth is my back pain at some point faded and my hips opened up. Similar to sensations, everything in my life is passing and I just have to accept, not crave, and not run away. Just accept. Obviously, it is easier said than done, but there is peace in knowing this truth and practicing it.
• Wisdom is eternal: One of the fascinating things about this experience was realizing that this technique was discovered 2500 years ago somewhere in India. The technique survived the test of time and was preserved to make its way to millions of people in the past 50 years. However, what was humbling was discovering that what science is now studying about embodiment and CBT has been discovered thousands of years ago by an enlightened man in India. We are just super late to the party. And if anything this is humbling but also a door opener to explore and be open to what the past has to teach us. 
• Change & integration take time: The experience is intentionally designed to help us go as deep as we went. The reality is two weeks after coming back from this course, the purging was still happening. Also, I have not yet fully integrated what has happened. I am trusting that my body will do the integration on my behalf. This experience was a reminder that sustainable change takes consistent, persistent, continuous action, and integration happens on its own time. In life sometimes, I just have to do the work, and let things take their course of action. 
• When we live right, we are ready to die: Whether it is life, the work we do, the relationships we build, vipassana reminded me not to be scared of endings, and invited me to think of my own mortality and why living a good life is of high priority. 

In the past few months, I have been dwelling on how what we do outside of work influences how we show up to our jobs, passions, vocations. For me personally, the answer has come to be that there is no separation. Everything I do is to become a better whole human being who shows up as their full self with love and kindness in everything I do. I am sharing my experience with vipassana to help myself make sense of what I went through but also because the world is flooded with suffering and this technique offers a helping hand. And a part of me wishes that suffering gets eradicated because we all deserve to live good lives. 

May all beings be happy, May all beings be safe, May all beings be free from suffering.