Meditation Boot- Camp: Ten Days of Vipassana Meditation

Nov 4 - 15

We were inspired first by our guru Nigel O J and then again by our travel buddies Nick and Kate (from our trek in Darjeeling) to take a 10 day Vipassana meditation course here in India. It was incredibly powerful, and possibly one of the hardest things I've done in a long time.

Vipassana meditation is meant to sharpen your mind, reduce your stress, and teaches tools to become aware of your body and your emotions, and more in control of your reactions to things in life, thereby (and this takes lots of practice) reducing the amount of pain and suffering you create for yourself by fretting when things don't go your way. This practice, while non-sectarian, has strong Buddhist principles, and centers on understanding that nothing in life is permanent – things are constantly changing.

Vipassana is a silent meditation, and male and female participants are separated, so Mark and I spent 10 days on the same campus with 90 or so other students, but didn't speak a word to one another or anyone else. This may sound difficult, but in fact the silence was the easiest part of the experience.

This all sounds nice and relaxing, right…so why was it so hard? Try sitting cross-legged for ten and a half hours a day, and tell me what you think! We would start our day at 4am, and didn't finish our "studies" until 9:30pm, and only had 3 hours of personal time crammed in there along with short times to eat our two meals a day. It felt like prison for the first three days, and at times I felt like rebelling and walking out. But then something powerful happened on the fourth day; I managed – despite the excruciating pain emanating from my hamstrings – to actually control my reactions, and not shift my posture for one full hour, even though my brain was telling me to. It is difficult to convey the power and meaning of this practice in words – I'm really not doing it justice. I will say that it was one of the most powerful experiences I've had in a long time – and the shift I feel is well worth enduring the unpleasant aspects of the course.