My 10-day Vipassana Meditation experience

An endless silent retreat story

14 min readJan 12, 2019

No talking. No gestures. No eye contact. No physical contact. No reading. No music. No writing. No electronic devices. No lying. No killing. No running. No physical exercises. No stealing. No sexual activities. No intoxicants.

What did it come into my mind when I decided to “give a go” to this experience? What is this “prison” about so far?

After a very stressful year of my life, I just wanted to take a break from everything and everyone. I needed to energise myself and get back all my energies (from mind to body). What’s the best way of doing so if not joining a course where they teach you one of the oldest Indian meditation techniques? The so called Vipassana Meditation — a technique which aims for the total eradication of mental impurities and the resultant highest happiness of full liberation (it is taught worldwide).

I remembered of a friend who told me about the experience he did when he was younger. I have always been fascinated about that story. Day by day and month by month, the willingness of undertaking such an adventure was growing into myself. So that, five months ago, in a moment of perfect craziness (and unawareness)… I finally decided to submit my application for a 10 days meditation course.

I am basically a very quiet person who loves to be on his own.
How can a silent experience scare me? It should not be a big deal — This is what I used to tell my mind when the start of the adventure was getting closer and closer. Well, I was wrong.

It was much more than being in silence. It was being with my mind. It was dealing with my thoughts. It was running away from myself. It was about finding inner excuses and new stimuli to not meditate. It was a face to face encounter. It was a big inner battle.

December 26th, 2018 — Day 0
Everything was finally ready. My luggage filled with all the needs which would have allowed me to live for the next 10 days.

I took the train early morning from Macerata (my hometown) directed to Faenza. Here, I met the first adventure mates with whom I was going to share this life changing experience.
Few hours later, a private shuttle exposing the label “Centro Vipassana” arrived and, after several minutes, we reached Lutirano (FI) where all has started!

Once reached the Vipassana Center, we have been welcomed by a light dinner. Afterwards, the organisers explained us all the rules we had to follow for the next ten days. Moreover, we had to undertake several points about the course discipline and we had to assure the wellbeing of our physical and mental conditions. Done! I signed my life away!

The Noble Silence started.

All students must observe Noble Silence from the beginning of the course until the morning of the last full day. Noble Silence means silence of body, speech, and mind. Any form of communication with fellow students, whether by gestures, sign language, written notes, etc. is prohibited. Students should cultivate the feeling that they are working in isolation.

The daily schedule

No free time. No possibilities to relax properly. The schedule was full from early morning to early evening.

Every single day starts at 04:00 a.m. with the sound of the gong — your best (and worst) friend (after yourself) throughout the entire duration of the course.

There are three breaks along the day:

Breakfast break (which goes from 06:30 am to 08:00 am): you have 30 minutes to eat. You have to be fast. Servants need to get their meal as well, after the meditators.
Lunch break (which goes from 11:00 am to 12:00 pm): same story. You are given 30 minutes to finish your dish.
Rest break (which goes from 12:00 pm to 01:00 pm): you can have a face-to-face talk with the teacher (for no more than 10 minutes). You can ask all the questions you have regarding the technique and other issues related to your progresses.
Tea break (which goes from 05:00 pm to 06:00 pm): other 30 minutes to finish your meal are given. If you are a new student, you are allowed to eat some fruits. If you are an old student, you are not allowed to eat anything at all. On the other hand, you can get a glass of hot water with lemon.

All the (vegan) food was amazing and delicious.

Every day, the meditation activities were located between the hall and your own room. Three times per day in the hall, precisely. During this time, you were not allowed to change your position for the whole hour (even if you could experience painful sensations in the body).

In the evening, after the group meditation in the hall, you have the chance to listen to the Teacher’s Discourse. Basically, a serie of recorded (life) stories from S.N. Goenka, the Indian teacher of Vipassana meditation who passed away in 2013.

Most of them are very inspiring and may help you to see things from a very different prospective. They help you to meditate on small and big life concepts.

We have to learn to see things as they are. We have to be objective and accept what it happens around us. We have to learn there is nothing permanent in life and we must be able to be detached from emotions and feelings. On the other hand, we need to observe them in order to act properly by developing a sense of equanimity. Nothing is permanent, that’s the life.
Anger, happiness, love, sadness and any other kind of sensations are not forever. They come and go. We cannot be attached to something which will soon disappear. It is the attachment which makes us miserable. It is the attachment which makes our minds unbalanced.

“The thing that hurts you the most in life is your own untamed mind. The thing that can help you the most in life is a disciplined mind. When the wild mind is untamed, it can be very harmful. If we learn to tame our minds, then it can help us by reducing our suffering and misery.”

Or, another important lesson from S.N. Goenka was:

“Learn to observe objectively whatever is happening. If someone is angry and tries to hide his anger, to swallow it, then it’s suppression. But by observing the anger, you will find that automatically it passes away. You become free from the anger if you learn how to observe it objectively.”

Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4

During the first days of the course, they teach you a breathing technique. It is called Anapana.

Everyone has to put aside the thoughts and focus on the breath. You should be able to feel it, getting inside and outside of your nose. You should strongly focus in order to feel the touch of the air which goes inside and outside.
It seemed easy. It was challenging.

There were two issues which hindered me:

Being motionless: I was unable to sit down for more than 10 minutes in a row. I always felt the need to stand up and do something else. I could not stay quiet, I needed to do things. I am a super proactive person and I cannot really stop a moment. Moving, moving, moving. Escaping, escaping, escaping. My mind talking.
The vortex of thoughts: I have never realised how much my mind has to say. The first days were terrible since I could not stop the flow of thoughts. My brain was thinking, continuously: past, future, future, past again, breath, past, future, future, future of the future, back to the past and then a jump to the future again. It was incredible. I could not focus in the present, in the moment. I could not focus on my breath for more than 3 minutes. I could not pay attention to the most natural sensation of my being.

The first days were endless. Everything was going extremely slow and my mind wanted to escape from that place, I wanted to do something different. I felt like I was in a prison, I felt like every day was the same of the previous one. No changes, no new activities, no possibilities of doing anything (beside the small walk in the signed path which was outside).

The view from the Vipassana Center in Lutirano (FI)

I immediately noticed that more the thoughts were negative, harder was for me to survive that experience. I learnt the only solution to not get crazy was the peace of mind. I had to focus on my breath.

During the Teacher’s Discourse, I understood the two points mentioned above were the main causes for people to quit the Vipassana course. In fact, the less motivated meditators decide to leave the center either on Day 2 or Day 6 (when the Indian mediation technique is being taught).

I was so happy I managed to be strong enough to overcome the first “rock”. Even though six more (endless) days were waiting for me. How far was the end still?

Day 5, Day 6, Day 7

I have finally reached half of the course. God, I could not believe I had been able to go so far!

In these days we started to learn Vipassana. It is basically a very powerful meditation technique which consists on feeling the emotions of the body without reacting to them. It was taught in India more than 2500 years ago as a universal remedy for universal ills.

What does all this mean? What is it about so far?

We have been taught to focus on our body, without letting the mind wondering. You have to start from the top of yourself and, minute by minute, you are asked to reach the feet. During this amount of time you have to focus your attention to each part of your body. You have to be aware of the sensations. Once a sensation arises, you have to observe it for a while and then you have to move on. You are not allowed to be attached to any of the feelings (whatever they are positive or negative). By doing so you eradicate from your soul bad thoughts and bad energy which has been accumulated in yourself since the day you were born.

It can also happen that a sensation can bring up particular thoughts of your past. You cannot react to them, you can only observe them. If you react to them, you generate other negative energy which won’t help you feeling better.

Overall the technique seems quiet easy. At the beginning you might feel just gross sensations in some parts of the body (such as pain, coldness, warmth, etc.). As you get more sensitive, you can experience subtle sensations (such as tingling, pulsations, energy throughout the body, etc). Once your body gets free from any sensations you reach the state in which you can experience a free flow of energy inside your body. That’s the state when your body completely dissolves.

Personally, I have mainly experienced gross sensations. Just a couple of times I have had the chance to feel more subtle feelings in my hands (such as a kind of electric discharge). When that happened I got scared and I immediately “woke up” from the meditation state. I do think you should feel completely ready to experiment such unusual “vibrations”. I was definitely not ready for such a strong experience.

Day 8: “Teacher, let me get out of here!”

I will never forget about this day. I really needed to quit the Vipassana Center. This day I was about to get crazy and, to be honest, I was afraid of passing away.

It was since I started to scan my body that I used to feel a strange sensation at the bottom of my stomach. It was like a blocking feeling, I could not go ahead with the body-scan after that point. Day by day, this perception did not disappear and it got more intense … till day 8 when it became unmanageable and it exploded, literally.

After the 2 hours morning meditation, I was resting on my bed and I reached a very deep relaxing state. Suddenly the sensation at the level of my stomach appeared again. This time it was unpredictable and stronger than usual. It was so intense that I suddenly started to cry, without any reason. I had big difficulties in breathing and this “block of energy” (that’s how I defined it) was coming up till the mouth. I did not vomit and I tried to bring it down, without any success.

I decided to move to the bathroom, tried to understand what it was happening to me. The sensation was huge, even trying to focus on my breath was difficult. I was keep crying with no reasons, mucus started to come out from my noise and rheum from my mouth.

What the hell was happening to me?

It took almost one hour till I could get back to a normal breathing, after I stopped crying. I was really exhausted.

Few minutes later, my brain started to work again properly. I suddenly felt light and great. When energies came back, I decided to run to the teacher. I had to tell him what happened to me some minutes before.

Me: Teacher, I felt a very gross sensation in my body. It was at the stomach level. I could not handle it, it overcame myself.

Teacher: That’s great. It means you are working properly.

Me: Working properly? I felt very bad. I want to quit the Center. This experience is too much for me!

Teacher: You are not going to leave the Center. I won’t allow you to do so. There are other two days missing. You will complete this course. You are working fine.

Me: I do not want to experience again what I experienced. It has been terrible. It was like a panic attack. I have never experienced a panic attack in my life.

Teacher: You are working deeply. You are eradicating negativity in yourself. Do not stuck with your emotions, it came and it went away.
I won’t let you leave the course. No way. This experience will make you stronger. Go in your room. Go to meditate.

He gave me hints on how to deal with that gross sensation in the case it would have appeared again. I understood I had no choices. I signed my life at the beginning of the course. I could not escape. I went back to my room, taking some rest and meditating on what happened to me.

The other part of the day went better and I felt really relived (even though exhausted).

Day 9, Day 10

The last two days of the course have been the most endless ones. I was tired of being there and I just wanted to go out, see my friends and my family.

During these last days I could not focus in the meditation activities. I was too tired to keep going and I was not motivated in doing something that I did not want to do.

The time seemed to not pass. Finally, on Day 10, the big news

The Noble Silence is over, you can now start the Noble Speech. Be aware that you are not allowed to make any physical contact till the end of the course.

It was amazing hearing the sound of my voice again. It was a bit shocking and weird being able to talk again with the people around me. Everyone started to tell about their experiences and everyone had different ones. It was inspiring and interesting coming back (partially) to the reality of the world after such a long time.

I finally had the chance to know my five roommates (one left on Day 4) with whom I never talked for the past nine days. We were strangers, sharing the same space. I recognised how weird was that!

Day 11

At 06:30, breakfast time, the course was finally over!

We could get back our phones and devices which we left at the reception on Day 0 and we could finally contact our family and friends. Yes, we survived!

Before leaving the center we left a donation (which will cover the expenses for the next students who go to live the same experience). Moreover, we helped with the cleaning tasks. Everything should have been ready for the next course which was going to happen within 3 days.

The last goodbyes before the shuttle drove us back to Faenza’s train station. From here the life started again. And, this time, with more awareness.

Final thoughts and lessons learnt

Our mind is a powerful tool: We are so miserable. We act without thinking. We think without being present in the moment. We always think about the past and the future but we are not good in living the moment.
Living the moment is so difficult for us. We are so attached to what we lived that we want to live some situations again or avoid others. We do not understand that, by doing so, we do not live now.
Our mind is so complex. Living with a mind full of thoughts make is difficult to understand ourselves, our body and our feelings.
Vipassana can make you fall crazy: There have been times, during the meditation state, I could not see things properly. My mind was just full of colours, pictures, videos. All related to my past and my future. It was weird. I thought I had some problems with my brain.
We live, we have feelings: I experienced that abstract sensations are made more concrete by listening to the body. Every sensation is linked to a specific part of the body. By understanding these subtle and gross sensations we might be able to understand better ourselves … even living in a world full of chaos.
I have experienced so many sensations (even the ones I have never felt before) throughout the course that anyone can even imagine.
Insomnia and lack of sleeping: One reason which made me choose Vipassana was the positive effect they say has on the sleep. Unfortunately this did not work for me. During those 10 days my brain could not understand anymore when to sleep and when to meditate. It was (almost) always aware. I used to sleep no more than 3/4 hours per night (when I was lucky). At the end of the course I was exhausted.
Funny fact: when the Noble Silence was over, I discovered that sleep deprivation affected lots of meditators and it seems to be a side effect of this technique (there was even a girl who could not sleep for 6 nights in a row!).
Focus: The days which follow the end of the course you will notice a more focused mind. The flow of thoughts will decrease and it will allow you to live a better life. You will start to see things from different prospectives and you will learn how to observe with equanimity.

Would I recommend this experience?

I think it is an experience which needs to be done at least once in life. It helps you to understand lots of points of your personality that you were not even aware of.

Go for it if you feel really ready. It is not a joke. Vipassana Meditation retreat is a powerful tool which will change your life forever (in a bad or in a good way).

What you are going to live is personal. Keep in mind the problems people have are always the same. They are linked to their past and to their future. For sure an experience like this one will help you to cope with thoughts. It will help to accept that everything comes and goes. It does not make sense to be attached to anything.