100 Hours of Meditation in 10 Days? Others Calling it Torture? Yes, Please!

Welcome to your most radical mind reboot yet.

I’m sharing a bedroom with someone other than a boyfriend for the first time since my last teenage sleepover.

This person is a total stranger. We’re not allowed to talk. Or look each other in the eye.

Staying in a converted barn would normally seem romantic, tonight it’s creepy. I feel a draft sneaking into my bed, the roof is making sounds, the stranger next to me could be anyone.

No wonder I’ve had a nightmare. But now the night’s darkness is turning to early grey, and I’m waiting for the alarm. Any minute now.

A Surgery of The Mind

Vipassana 10-day silent meditation courses have longer waiting lists than London’s poshest restaurants.

Which is bizzare, because you’re basically signing up to torture yourself. But if you need to get unstuck, or find a new light at the end of the tunnel, Vipassana is perfect. It will help you find answers — by teaching you to find yourself first.

You live like a monk for 10 days. It’s just you. Your mind, your body, and your emotions. Someone cooks for you twice a day. But you don’t know who they are. Nor do you know anyone else on the course. You’re supposed to stay as inward as you can, all the time. So no talking. No eye contact. Your phone is locked in a secure locker room which is now out of bounds. You simply can’t get to it. No books either. It’s just you.

Your “only” job is to drag yourself out of bed at 4am and meditate. For 10 hours. Every day. Some people even go as far as calling the process a surgery of the mind. I can’t say I don’t agree.

I joined the course a mess.

I came out on the other side grounded. Impossibly calm. Lighter, and detoxed. I felt like I grew by at least 10 feet. And while the experience is deeply personal to each student, many parts of it also test everyone in similar ways.

Here’s how it worked for me.

Silence Isn’t Such Bad Company After All

The wake-up gong resonates through the camp at precisely 4am. I love the sound. It’s echoing through the forest. Urgent but calm, it feels ethereal.

Before my roommate has a chance to stir under her sheets, I’m out the door. The dark near-morning is already buzzing with chirpy birds and foraging squirrels. The world is very much alive. And for the first time in a long time, I’m listening.

“You’re awfully quiet.”

It rattles my cage every time I hear someone say this to another person. Being quiet isn’t awful.

Silence is in fact noble.

Staying silent at all times is one of the key Vipassana rules. Not a single word. Bizarelly, I loved it. Silence gave me so much space. Space to hear, observe, focus, and deal with my thoughts.

My core opened up and started processing years of accumulated negatives that never had the chance to fully leave. Every day I noticed insanely tiny things I would never normally pay attention to. I’m convinced the silence alone helped me solve half the problems that weighed me down on arrival.

Life speaks to those who listen. The Earth does too. It’s true.

I always knew quiet people rule the world. But there, in the middle of endless English meadows and forests, I finally understood why. They connect, observe, process, think. They hold space for different perspectives. And only then, they take action.

Smartphones Don’t Make The Heart Beat

I’m a nervous wreck as I swipe right to put my phone to sleep.

“Turn it off and lock it up,” they said. Breeze, I thought when I first signed up. But now? Not so easy. Surprisingly gutwrenching in fact. I’ve had a phone since I was 15. Always in my bag, on my desk, by the bed. The attachment is real.

I’m sweating and my hands are shaking. What the hell. Pick yourself up.

I finally force myself to do it, and lock my phone together with other valuables in the security room. I hide the key in my toiletry bag.

I feel like I’ve lost a limb.

Smartphones do make life easier. But they make it harder in many ways too. Masking as easy entertainment, phones are instant distraction, and make our brain less able to focus. Our attention span shortens. We walk into lamp posts. We barely notice our friends’ jokes, happy to swap them for hilarious videos. We get addicted.

Not having access to my phone made it palpable how much of my normal day it actually consumed. Since then, I often forget my phone at home on purpose. And I always leave it in another room when working. The absence of distraction might drive you crazy for a while, but the benefits are worth it. Your mind will thank you.

Crazy Emotions Need a Dramatic Exit

It’s day 3 in the main meditation hall. I’m a picture of utter misery on my meditation cushion. Tears are pouring down my face. I’m finally crying for all of them. My mum-in-law. Con. Keith. Chuck the dog. I’m crying for everything they were and everything they still could have been.

Breathe, urges Keith. He appears in my mind, dancing in rays of green stage lights. He has the widest smile on his face. I smile back through the tears. Except, as my rational brain quickly reminds me, he isn’t breathing anymore.

I feel the pain squeeze my heart dry. That’s right. Go for it. Release the layers. Let go.

In a world where we are constantly told we need to keep it together, it’s easy for unprocessed emotions to layer like rotting leaves, until they fill up our entire being. Until we can’t take any more. And then they burst. They swing us sidewards stronger than a gale. It becomes impossible to take back control.

Suppressed emotions suffocate us.

Just like the attention-seeking cousin who always makes a scene and slams the door, your crazy emotions need a dramatic exit. Otherwise they will never exit at all.

Impress Yourself Before Impressing Others

At a 10-day Vipassana course, things don’t get easier with time. Nope. Instead, just as you think you’re getting the hang of things, and start giving yourself mental high-fives, they make things harder. And then even harder the next day.

Things get the toughest when they introduce the determination sessions. The name doesn’t even give them justice.

Each determination session is one hour long. You get three a day. And to successfully complete a determination session, you sit in meditation, for 60 full minutes, without moving.

You can’t move at all. Not even your little finger. You can’t scratch an itch or swipe your hair away from your face. Nothing. Even if your back is killing you and your legs go numb. Nothing.

It’s as bad as it sounds. Even if you usually spend hours sitting at your desk working, this is different. There’s nothing to distract you. Give it 15 minutes, and your body will start to seriously bother you. Then hurt. You can’t think about nothing but the pain. Your mind becomes your personal Medusa. It will try anything to seduce you into making a move.

But I was hungry for a profound experience. I needed to do something, anything, to try and overturn my mental state. So I gathered all the determination I didn’t know I had.

Fighting the pain didn’t work. I’d move. What did work, was equanimity. I let the pain take over. I used all the strength I had to watch the pain from a distance, and let it dissolve my resistance. It was still hell, but I accepted it.

I wasn’t ready for the feelings that followed each determination session I completed. The sense of power. The high energy. I looked in the mirror as I splashed cold water on my face. The whites of my eyes have never been so white.

This is how you grow, I thought.

Most of us have learned to seek instant relief. We want a speedy way out of discomfort, challenges, situations, pain. But the reality is, it almost never happens. Yet we still expect it.

This was the best lesson I’d ever learned about acceptance.

It’s possible to work towards change while accepting the pain of the moment. Most important life changes never happen overnight. You’ll focus better when you don’t let the lack of instant relief discourage you.

Impress yourself with your own strength first. Everything else will follow.

A Change In Substance

I felt as if I finally understood what mattered.

It takes trust to fall asleep next to a stranger.

It takes guts to let your emotions flow freely in a world that tells you to hide them.

It takes time to accept you can’t always expect instant relief.

It takes insane willpower to push through physical pain.

But once you go through such challenges, you’ll never be the same person again. You grow with those experiences. Your mind gets a glow-up. You mature as a person.

A mind stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.

Especially whenever you decide to face something unthinkable.

Like this article? Hit subscribe

I also write on Substack: Building Momentum, Solo