• Can you go for 10 days without using your phone, laptop, or tablet?
• Can you go for 10 days without access to the internet?
• Can you go for 9 days without talking to others?

If your answer is hell no for all the questions above, I’m with you. What if I tell you that there’s an experience that combines all of the above restrictions?

“There’s no way this is real. Going for 10 days without necessities sounds like hell on earth. No one will ever sign up for this.” Those are my first thoughts when I heard of a Vipassana meditation course. Yet every year, thousands of people around the world sign up for Vipassana meditation retreats. I ended up signing up for a course too, not only once, but twice.

What is meditation?

Meditation technique can train your mind to focus on the presence. Usually people practice meditation to improve their ability to focus, relax, stay calm, and think more clearly. Some examples are mindfulness meditation, breathing meditation, transcendental meditation, Zen Buddhism meditation, or Vipassana meditation. To take Tim Ferriss’ explanation, practicing meditation can help you become less responsive and more respond-able.

Vipassana meditation

Vipassana is an ancient meditation technique that trains your mind to observe sensations (e.g., heat, cold, pulsing, throbbing, pressure, extension, contraction, etc.) throughout your body. The intro course to Vipassana is a silent retreat for 10 days. Then you can choose follow-up courses with varying duration, from 3 days to 3 months.

This course is taught by video recordings of S.N. Goenka, a Vipassana meditation teacher who started the first non-commercial Vipassana meditation center in 1976. He passed away in 2013 but his talks were recorded to be played in courses even until today.

Okay but this Vipassana course sounds too intense. Why did a Gen Z like you take this course?

Some people may think that practicing meditation is for older generations who are more mature. But a Gen Z can benefit from meditation too. I’m a sociable, optimistic, and fairly bubbly person. However, I realized that occasionally I got more impatient, distracted, and anxious than I’d like. I started practicing meditation in 2018. My entry point was using an app called Insight Timer (available on both iOS and Android). I did 10 – 20 min of guided meditation on this app. Within a few months, I saw very tangible benefits.

From there, I did more research and got to know about a 10-day Vipassana meditation. At first, it sounded too crazy and intense for me (as mentioned at the beginning of this post). But then I read about stories of some Vipassana students like Yuval Harari (history professor and author of Sapiens), Jack Dorsey (Co-Founder and Former CEO at Twitter, Co-Founder and Former CEO of Square), Daria Rose (neurologist), Tim Ferriss (author and podcast host). I then decided to take on this challenge to attend a 10-day Vipassana course.

My first attempt was in the summer of 2019 after my college graduation. I had to quit after 7 days. My second attempt was in the fall of 2021. This time, I actually finished the full 10 days.

– Day 1 – 3: Silence starts. Anapana breathing meditation for 3 days

– Day 4 – 9: Vipassana meditation for 6 days

– Day 10: Complete silence ends

Space

For both times, I went to the Vipassana center in Claymont, Delaware. The center provides a serene environment very conducive to meditation.

Daily schedule

A simple summary of schedule

– Morning: wake up > meditate > breakfast + break > meditate

– Afternoon: lunch + break > optional office hour > meditate

– Evening: tea break > meditate > evening talk by Goenka > meditate > sleep

Overall, a student meditates for 10 hours total each day in a series of sessions lasting from 1 to 2 hours. However, you can take a break whenever you want. Multiple times during my retreats, a meditation session got too intense that I went for a walk for 30 min before returning to meditation.

The evening talks (called discourses) by Goenka were the closest to a normal-life activity that I got. He talks about meditation techniques and shares stories about the underlying philosophy. He sits and talks with no walking around or using beautiful pictures/slides. But his speeches are very interesting. He shares funny stories that contain lots of meaningful teaching moments. These talks are available on YouTube. I’d say, though, that watching each talk after 10 hours of meditation each day gives it a unique interestingness and excitement compared to watching each video in a normal pace of life.

Over the 10 days, I went through lots of ups and downs. The first day or two, I got bored out of my mind for having to sit and observe my breath for hours and hours. Distracting thoughts came and went through out the process. In the first few days, these thoughts were about recent memories or near-future plans. Then from day 3 onward, things started to shift in a major way. I ran out of recent thoughts and my mind started to bring to the surface memories from distant past. Many of these memories were sad or traumatic with some neutral/happy memories in between. I relived many of these memories in vivid details. Many times throughout the process, I got so scared that my heart was beating super fast and I got sweaty out of feeling scared. Other Vipassana meditators reported similar experience of reliving past trauma in their first 10-day course.

Outcomes after 10 days

It was a hell of a ride. And it was really tough mentally to relive many past memories. But I became a better person because of the meditation technique.

2. Constant changes

Another lesson is about impermanence. As the saying goes, the only constant in this world is change. The usual interpretation is the speed of new innovations and technologies. For a Vipassana meditator, it’s about how fleeting your feelings and thoughts are. Even an itchy feeling comes and goes if you observe and wait instead of scratching it immediately. When you meditate, I understand constant change on an experiential level instead of an intellectual level. Consequently, I learn to manage my expectations better. We, as humans, have this tendency to expect lasting happiness and joy from things that can’t deliver. A guy thinks that buying a new car will feel amazing. But that amazing feeling wears off after a few days or weeks, much shorter than he expected, hence the disappointment. Material possessions, positions of power, human connections, etc. all share the same feature of impermanence. Now I feel much more comfortable with changes and waste less time on delving into regrets than before.

3. Patience

I became a nicer and more patient person. Do you or people you know get into frequent fights with parents? I used to argue in 90% of the conversations with my dad. I would share a story, and he would start lecturing me and imposing his views. I would disagree and push back immediately. He would start criticizing me for pushing back without listening. We started arguing. Nothing got done and both of us got frustrated. It became a habit that neither my dad nor I could break.

Yet, after coming back from my meditation retreat, I transformed the relationship with my dad. An instruction that Goenka (the Vipassana teacher) repeats over and over again is that a meditator must try to be aware and curious. Observe the body sensations and be aware of what is going on. If I find an itchy feeling, I try to resist the temptation to scratch it immediately. I try to be a bit more patient to observe it with an open and curious mind to see how long it lasts and what does it feel like. After practicing meditation for 10 days, I became a lot more sensitive to changes in my emotional state.

Coming home, when my dad starts lecturing me. I could notice my irritation more clearly. But instead of rushing to push back, I was a bit more patience. The first time I asked my dad to tell me more, he was visibly shocked. He fully expected me to push back and was ready to criticize me. But I didn’t. As he explained more, I could start to see his point of view and respond more calmly. It started a new cycle of friendly conversations between me and my dad. I cannot thank Vipassana enough for helping me with my communications with my dad.

4. Productivity

The last noteworthy benefit of practicing meditation is improved focus and productivity. Focusing on my breath and sensations is probably one of the most boring activities ever. But now that I learn to hold my attention on my breath, I can stay focused for longer to do a difficult task at work or learn a new challenging technical concept.

Parting thought

Meditation is a great technique to relieve stress and build your mental resilience. But I know it’s not for everyone. I’d recommend that you at least try it for a few days and then assess whether you want to continue.

Practicing meditation is like going to the gym. When you go to the gym and put your reps in, you build muscle. If you don’t go to the gym for a while, you gradually lose your muscle mass. Similarly, you would want to keep practicing meditation to reap its benefits. I went through a period of 6 months that I fell off the meditation wagon and saw a big change in my mental health. I became more irritable and got distracted more easily. The bottom line is don’t expect meditation to be a magic pill for you to take once and done.