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Abstract

the first time in my life led me to see my body in a completely different way. I could easily focus on small parts of my skin and feel them slightly vibrate. I could hear my heart thumping in my head so loudly that any outside noise was nothing in comparison to this. I could feel my head pounding with my heartbeat. Every itch magnified and I was able to make the itching go away just by focusing on it. During some days, I felt as if I was massaging my back with my own mind just by concentrating on the vibrating and pulsing in my muscles.My physicality was surrounding me, and the world was beating in its rhythm. We were told that some people meditate for such a long time that after many years, they can clearly feel their organs. They pierce their body with their mind, and their body becomes nothing but vibrations.Our body is so much more than what we usually let ourselves see. Our mind is capable of such strong inward focus that it can pierce physicality. We can do so much more than we think we can.<h1 id="32f5">My mind is cluttered</h1>“Out of clutter, find simplicity.” ― Albert EinsteinI always knew that every day, my mind was filling itself with useless garbage from the buzzing world around me. I didn’t realise how much cluttered it was, though, until I cut myself away from all outside stimulation for ten days.I could feel my mind slowly slip into a state of calmness, peacefulness and clarity. It became easier and easier to shut my thoughts out and just…exist.When I left the camp and entered the ordinary world again, I felt my mind pick up new clutter. Within two weeks, I was almost back to where I had been before the meditation experience (which is arguably my fault, because we were supposed to continue meditating for two hours a day, and let’s just say I didn’t exactly stick to it). I watched my mind get heavier, and with the clutter came the worrying, the overthinking and the obsessing.The good effects that meditation has on my mental health had never been as clear to me as when I watched them slip away. It was the ultimate proof that implementing meditation in my life is actually very good for me.<h1 id="9e9a">Boredom can make you go bonkers</h1>“I am convinced that boredom is one of the greatest tortures. If I were to imagine Hell, it would be the place where you were continually bored.” — Erich FrommI was ready to not use my voice for nine days. It was fine. I was ready to go to sleep hungry. It was… not the worst. What I wasn’t ready for was the boredom.I usually don’t really struggle with boredom because I rarely experience it. I’d like to think that I have a rich inner world, and as long as I have enough books, I’m set. Here, I didn’t have my books. I didn’t have anything other than my own mind. And it wasn’t enough.I cried multiple times. I slept when I was supposed to meditate in my room, not because I was tired (I wasn’t), but because I wanted time to move faster. Each hour dragged by so slowly. Every evening during the teacher’s discourse, I stared at the number on the screen: Day 4. Day 5. Day 7. I remember sitting there, looking at the number 6 and silently crying in the middle of the hall, surrounded by people. I didn’t even care that they could see me cry. The boredom exhausted me.I had a small notebook hidden in my room, just in case I would need to write something down. I didn’t. I forced myself to obey the rules, and although I had a notebook and a philosophy magazine, I didn’t write nor read. I doodled instead.“The rules don’t say anything about doodling,” I kept telling myself as I was drawing childish images of my mum’s and my best friend’s faces. I drew them because I felt so lonely. I also drew them because I was going bonkers. I drew a hand and played an old game for children with myself, counting the fingers and randomly choosing if my future husband would be Harry Styles or Severus Snape. I kept imagining absurd, completely unfunny scenarios that made me chuckle, just to have

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some fun. The main event of the day was when I could eat a raw bar from my super-secret stash (although I think everybody in the house probably heard me munch on it because you could hear a person turn in their bed three curtains away from you).I kept thinking about Heaven from Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Geiman. I felt like I was in it. It was so peaceful and kind. It was also boring me to death. All I could think about was Crowley and how much I wanted to be him.This experience taught me that boredom really is a form of torture. When I opened my magazine and read someone else’s words after ten days, my brain did a happy dance. No words had ever been as interesting as the ones I read that day.<h1 id="39de">I’m stronger than I think I am</h1>“If you are going through hell, keep going.” ― Winston S. ChurchillOn our fourth day, we were told that we should try to not move during our group meditations. That meant staying in one position for one whole hour, three times a day. The first time we did this, it lasted two hours because we were being taught the Vipassana technique.So, I didn’t move for two hours. I was sitting there with no support for my back and with my feet underneath my thighs. I was in the classic meditation pose, which proved to be very impractical for me because blood stopped flowing in my legs. After 2 hours of pain and of trying to focus on and accept this pain, I was finally allowed to move my body — and I let out the longest sigh of my life. I started laughing with relief. One second later, laughing turned into sobbing. I was crying with happiness that it was over.During those ten days, I seriously considered leaving multiple times. I didn’t. I was constantly tempted to read my magazine or journal in a notebook. I didn’t. I made myself not move even when I desperately wanted to (and nobody would persecute me for moving, nobody was, after all, forcing me to do anything).I didn’t stick to the schedule. Often I slept instead of meditating because I had a headache or because I simply couldn’t stand meditating anymore. But I did manage to complete the course.It was harder than I had expected it to be. It was probably one of the hardest experiences of my life so far.And I made it.We are always stronger than we think we are.<h1 id="1611">I love life</h1>“People couldn’t become truly holy, he said, unless they also had the opportunity to be definitively wicked.” — Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, WitchWhen I was younger, I always thought it would be cool to become a monk and go meditate in a temple for the rest of my life. Now I know that as cool as it may sound, I would hate that sort of life. Many people are well equipped for it and I’m glad that there are humans on this planet who are strong enough to cultivate their mind to a point where they can do and experience unbelievable things.I’m just not one of them. And that’s okay.I love meditating as a part of my daily life. But I also know that if I were to choose, I would choose ‘normal’ life over being a monk in a heartbeat.I love art. I love books. I love films. I love storytelling and intriguing ideas that I can discuss with my friends. I love dancing to music and taking risks and exploring new places and writing my heart out and engaging with people and solving problems and I love living, even when it’s sometimes as far away from Heaven as you can get.I choose it anyway.As much as I have struggled during this experience, I think that what this organisation does is incredible. The Vipassana meditation camp teaches people so much. I truly appreciate that I was able to go there and to let it challenge me. It helped me grow, and that’s really what I was after.<figure id="adf9"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*AQfMNIuI02JOh5LkhVbgcg.png"><figcaption></figcaption></figure></article></body>

I Meditated 10 Hours a Day for 10 Days

Lessons from a Vipassana meditation camp

One year ago, I headed off to the middle of nowhere in England and spent 10 days in Dhamma Dipa, a Vipassana meditation centre. I had wanted to do this since I was eighteen. Why?

Maybe because I’ve always been into exploring the human consciousness on different levels and re-discovering myself in a brand new light. Maybe because I like challenging myself and I’m a big fan of personal growth. Maybe because I’m crazy and I rush into things with few realistic expectations and excessive courage coming from the place of:

‘What’s the worst that could happen?’

So, there I was at twenty years old, alone, surrounded by strangers, about an hour away from civilisation, willing to give these people all my technology and essentially imprison myself for ten days. It was forbidden to speak out loud for 9 days (with anyone — not even a whispered conversation was allowed), it was forbidden to read, to write, and I didn’t have any food except for the meals they gave me (breakfast at 7 AM, lunch at 11 AM, a piece of fruit at 5 PM). I did have a few raw bars hidden in my “room” — I used quote marks here because my room was basically a bed and a bedside table hidden behind a curtain, in a long hall with other curtained “rooms”.

I accepted all of this with excitement.

I did say I was crazy.

This was the daily schedule, which I have borrowed from Dhamma Dipa’s website.

4:00 am Morning wake-up bell
4:30–6:30 am Meditate in the hall or in your room
6:30–8:00 am Breakfast break
8:00–9:00 am Group meditation in the hall
9:00–11:00 am Meditate in the hall or in your room according to the teacher’s instructions
11:00–12:00 noon Lunch break
12 noon-1:00 pm Rest and interviews with the teacher
1:00–2:30 pm Meditate in the hall or in your room
2:30–3:30 pm Group meditation in the hall
3:30–5:00 pm Meditate in the hall or in your own room according to the teacher’s instructions
5:00–6:00 pm Tea break
6:00–7:00 pm Group meditation in the hall
7:00–8:15 pm Teacher’s Discourse in the hall
8:15–9:00 pm Group meditation in the hall
9:00–9:30 pm Question time in the hall
9:30 pm Retire to your own room — Lights out

Each day involved 10 hours and 45 minutes of meditation. Nothing else. You sit, you close your eyes, you focus on your breath and let the teacher lead you, and after a few days, you switch to the Vipassana technique. You do this for 10 days.

I’m not allowed to teach the Vipassana technique to anyone, and so I won’t explain the meditation itself to you. I will, however, share the lessons that this experience taught me, because oh boy, did it teach me things.

My body is right here

“The human body is the best work of art.” ― Jess C. Scott

Everyone knows that their body is connected to their mind and that it’s a vessel we couldn’t live without. It’s obvious. Every day, we see our hands move, we touch our face, we hear our breathing, we smell our scent, we interact with the outside world through our senses.

Often, however, I feel disconnected from my body. I don’t care about it. I don’t give it good nutrition, exercise, I don’t think about my internal organs, I don’t feel my blood pouring through my veins. Every day, I only graze the surface of what my body actually is.

Entering a deep meditative state for the first time in my life led me to see my body in a completely different way. I could easily focus on small parts of my skin and feel them slightly vibrate. I could hear my heart thumping in my head so loudly that any outside noise was nothing in comparison to this. I could feel my head pounding with my heartbeat. Every itch magnified and I was able to make the itching go away just by focusing on it. During some days, I felt as if I was massaging my back with my own mind just by concentrating on the vibrating and pulsing in my muscles.

My physicality was surrounding me, and the world was beating in its rhythm. We were told that some people meditate for such a long time that after many years, they can clearly feel their organs. They pierce their body with their mind, and their body becomes nothing but vibrations.

Our body is so much more than what we usually let ourselves see. Our mind is capable of such strong inward focus that it can pierce physicality. We can do so much more than we think we can.

My mind is cluttered

“Out of clutter, find simplicity.” ― Albert Einstein

I always knew that every day, my mind was filling itself with useless garbage from the buzzing world around me. I didn’t realise how much cluttered it was, though, until I cut myself away from all outside stimulation for ten days.

I could feel my mind slowly slip into a state of calmness, peacefulness and clarity. It became easier and easier to shut my thoughts out and just…exist.

When I left the camp and entered the ordinary world again, I felt my mind pick up new clutter. Within two weeks, I was almost back to where I had been before the meditation experience (which is arguably my fault, because we were supposed to continue meditating for two hours a day, and let’s just say I didn’t exactly stick to it). I watched my mind get heavier, and with the clutter came the worrying, the overthinking and the obsessing.

The good effects that meditation has on my mental health had never been as clear to me as when I watched them slip away. It was the ultimate proof that implementing meditation in my life is actually very good for me.

Boredom can make you go bonkers

“I am convinced that boredom is one of the greatest tortures. If I were to imagine Hell, it would be the place where you were continually bored.” — Erich Fromm

I was ready to not use my voice for nine days. It was fine. I was ready to go to sleep hungry. It was… not the worst. What I wasn’t ready for was the boredom.

I usually don’t really struggle with boredom because I rarely experience it. I’d like to think that I have a rich inner world, and as long as I have enough books, I’m set. Here, I didn’t have my books. I didn’t have anything other than my own mind. And it wasn’t enough.

I cried multiple times. I slept when I was supposed to meditate in my room, not because I was tired (I wasn’t), but because I wanted time to move faster. Each hour dragged by so slowly. Every evening during the teacher’s discourse, I stared at the number on the screen: Day 4. Day 5. Day 7. I remember sitting there, looking at the number 6 and silently crying in the middle of the hall, surrounded by people. I didn’t even care that they could see me cry. The boredom exhausted me.

I had a small notebook hidden in my room, just in case I would need to write something down. I didn’t. I forced myself to obey the rules, and although I had a notebook and a philosophy magazine, I didn’t write nor read. I doodled instead.

“The rules don’t say anything about doodling,” I kept telling myself as I was drawing childish images of my mum’s and my best friend’s faces. I drew them because I felt so lonely. I also drew them because I was going bonkers. I drew a hand and played an old game for children with myself, counting the fingers and randomly choosing if my future husband would be Harry Styles or Severus Snape. I kept imagining absurd, completely unfunny scenarios that made me chuckle, just to have some fun. The main event of the day was when I could eat a raw bar from my super-secret stash (although I think everybody in the house probably heard me munch on it because you could hear a person turn in their bed three curtains away from you).

I kept thinking about Heaven from Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Geiman. I felt like I was in it. It was so peaceful and kind. It was also boring me to death. All I could think about was Crowley and how much I wanted to be him.

This experience taught me that boredom really is a form of torture. When I opened my magazine and read someone else’s words after ten days, my brain did a happy dance. No words had ever been as interesting as the ones I read that day.

I’m stronger than I think I am

“If you are going through hell, keep going.” ― Winston S. Churchill

On our fourth day, we were told that we should try to not move during our group meditations. That meant staying in one position for one whole hour, three times a day. The first time we did this, it lasted two hours because we were being taught the Vipassana technique.

So, I didn’t move for two hours. I was sitting there with no support for my back and with my feet underneath my thighs. I was in the classic meditation pose, which proved to be very impractical for me because blood stopped flowing in my legs. After 2 hours of pain and of trying to focus on and accept this pain, I was finally allowed to move my body — and I let out the longest sigh of my life. I started laughing with relief. One second later, laughing turned into sobbing. I was crying with happiness that it was over.

During those ten days, I seriously considered leaving multiple times. I didn’t. I was constantly tempted to read my magazine or journal in a notebook. I didn’t. I made myself not move even when I desperately wanted to (and nobody would persecute me for moving, nobody was, after all, forcing me to do anything).

I didn’t stick to the schedule. Often I slept instead of meditating because I had a headache or because I simply couldn’t stand meditating anymore. But I did manage to complete the course.

It was harder than I had expected it to be. It was probably one of the hardest experiences of my life so far.

And I made it.

We are always stronger than we think we are.

I love life

“People couldn’t become truly holy, he said, unless they also had the opportunity to be definitively wicked.” — Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

When I was younger, I always thought it would be cool to become a monk and go meditate in a temple for the rest of my life. Now I know that as cool as it may sound, I would hate that sort of life. Many people are well equipped for it and I’m glad that there are humans on this planet who are strong enough to cultivate their mind to a point where they can do and experience unbelievable things.

I’m just not one of them. And that’s okay.

I love meditating as a part of my daily life. But I also know that if I were to choose, I would choose ‘normal’ life over being a monk in a heartbeat.

I love art. I love books. I love films. I love storytelling and intriguing ideas that I can discuss with my friends. I love dancing to music and taking risks and exploring new places and writing my heart out and engaging with people and solving problems and I love living, even when it’s sometimes as far away from Heaven as you can get.

I choose it anyway.

As much as I have struggled during this experience, I think that what this organisation does is incredible. The Vipassana meditation camp teaches people so much. I truly appreciate that I was able to go there and to let it challenge me. It helped me grow, and that’s really what I was after.