Three years ago, I set foot in my first Vipassana meditation center in the brutal summer heat of southern India. Thinking about doing one? Here’s six things that may help. 

What is Vipassana?

Vipassana, which means “to see things as they really are,” is an ancient meditation technique originating from the Buddha that has been passed down and shared in thousands of courses across 94 countries. It teaches us, through mere observation of mind, thoughts, emotions and their effects on our body, how to eradicate suffering at the root level, instead of reacting with either desire or aversion.

A simple yet powerful technique stripped bare of all mantras, chanting, visualization, kriyas, breath manipulation or other concentration tools, it is meditation in its rawest form. 

A strict noble silence is observed to facilitate the most effective results. No speaking, no writing, no reading, no touching, no music, no eye contact. Just you and yourself – 10 hours a day – for 10 days. 

What Happens During a Vipassana?

In Vipassana, we face everything that comes up as it is, head-on. Fears, desires, bottled-up memories, childhood conditionings and reactive patterns, our deepest sufferings (called “sankharas.”) But because we have no smartphone, no person, no book or music, nor any other distraction that enables us to run away from them, we have no choice but to look them in face and deal with them. 

Instead of changing the action that takes place outside, we change the reaction that takes place inside.

S.N. Goenka, the funny, compassionate Burmese teacher who spread and popularized this technique, said that blindly living from one reaction to another is the source of all our suffering.

“The final goal of Vipassana is to purify the mind not just at the surface level, but at the deepest level in order to change its behavior pattern which keeps on remaining agitated all the time.”

There are no charges for the course – not even to cover the cost of food and accommodation. All expenses are met by donations from people who, having completed a course and experienced the benefits of Vipassana, wish to give this gift for others to benefit.

1)  It’s the same exact course everywhere – minus the food and housing. 

Regardless of which center you choose, all courses are identical. From the wake up bell, to the breaks, to the daily video content and the timing and placement of Goenka’s guided instructions. The only thing that varies is the food (e.g., if you are in Thailand, naturally you will be served Thai food) and quality of housing, which will obviously be location-dependent. In my first Vipassana in India, I shared a room with two other girls. We had a thin one inch cushion for a mattress and a bucket for our shower. My ego screamed at the food: mushy leftover rice and a sort of slop with some meager veggies mixed in was what we had most days. For the 5 p.m. “dinner” break, we were offered only tea and one cup of beans each. On day five, we were finally offered some fruit for breakfast which we welcomed voraciously and devoured gratefully.

My second Vipassana in Thailand, to my delight, felt like a five star hotel compared to the first. I had my own room with private bathroom in a white concrete building. The vegetarian meals were tasty, bountiful and varied. At our 5 p.m. break we were given a much larger range of choices, consisting of coffee/tea, cream, sugar, candies and small biscuits, and even a small buffet with a couple of simple foods available to meditators who declared health reasons for needing to eat after the fasting period. 

Choose your location wisely. Trust me – you will know it very well! 

2) You can break the rules…a little bit. 

Vipassana has a way of making even the most disciplined person start to crack. Your ego will not like it. It wants to write something, say something, touch someone, eat when we’re hungry or run or walk or jump or scream or shout. 

I’m here to tell you that it’s okay to bend the rules a little bit and I certainly wasn’t the only one to do so. 

Exercise is forbidden, but I still did my 10 minutes of yoga or stretching every morning. It’s good for the circulation with all the sitting, just keep it private and don’t make a big show about it. 

They also tell you outside food is not allowed. But I got smart for my second Vipassana, and am not ashamed to admit I had some small, non-perishable snacks stashed away in my bag. If you’re like me and prone to low blood-sugar or get light-headed after long periods of little or no food, it’s not the worst thing to have a handful of nuts handy. Turns out, moving mountains with your mind burns a lot of energy!

3) Your experience will be completely unique to you. 

Everybody around you is having a completely different experience from you. Some people ride through anger, others sadness, euphoria, agitation, restlessness, anxiety, grief, despair, joy, or any number or combination of emotions that are inherent in the human spectrum of emotion. All of your sh*t will come up. You will face your greatest demons and your biggest dreams. But how it comes up and expresses itself is one hundred percent unique to yourself and your own past conditioning and collection of human experience. 

Do not compare yourself to anyone else. Release all expectations of how you think it will go, because it will almost certainly be very different from what you imagined. 

4) You are very supported. 

They don’t just stick you in a room with a bunch of people and say, “Alright, go at it!” In reality it is nothing like that. On the first day, pillows, cushions, backrests and even chairs are offered for the elderly or those who cannot sit on the floor. Every minute is scheduled and accounted for. The start, ending, and much of the bulk of the meditative hours are guided by Goenka’s voice. There are servers there ready to help you with any logistical issues. If you have a question about gluten in the food, or need more toilet paper or meditation cushions, or if there is (god forbid) a giant spider in your room, you are permitted to speak. There are even selected hours during the day in which you can speak to the teacher about the technique if you have any questions. 

After four days I was almost in tears from my back pain, and finally (reluctantly) asked for a backrest.

Trust me, they want you to succeed! Take advantage of the slotted question hours with the teacher and don’t be afraid to ask for what you need.

5) Your body will hurt. 

By day three, I was already feeling the pain seeping into my middle back. Probably something to do with my core not being strong enough or the fact that I never use my spinal muscles to sit upright on my bum for hours on end. Your legs, feet and butt will fall asleep. Your knees or hips will hurt like hell. Every. Single. Day. Your digestion may suffer because it’s not used to the food you’re being served. But nothing is permanent; even the most intense sensations pass. Eventually, you may start to discover that the pain is all created in your mind. Maybe not. It’s all part of the experience.

6) Don’t run away. 

Commit to completing the course before you arrive. 

This might seem obvious to most, but you’d be surprised at the number of people who straight up leave the course after the first day. They say day two and day six are the hardest. I personally remember day  two, five and seven being particularly challenging on my first Vipassana. The first day is all new and exciting, but by day two, reality sets in.

Your mind will start to give you all these reasons why you shouldn’t be there. Why “this course” isn’t for you. “I don’t need to sit here for 10 days to learn this stuff.” “This is so pointless, I am not going to learn anything.” “This kind of thing isn’t for me, this is for [these] or [those] kinds of people.” Or, if you did your first Vipassana in 40F Indian heat like me: “I think I might die from this fu***** excruciating heat!” 

It sort of became fun, like an interesting little game to watch the tricks my mind tried to play on me. The first thing that was provoked was my ego. Because Vipassana creates a channel into our subconscious mind, thoughts and memories rise to the surface that we’ve been oblivious to for months or years.

Stick with it. You need to be fully committed to the technique in order to get the most out of it. Your ego won’t like it, but there is a reason the course is 10 days and not 3. The mind needs time. Years or decades of conditioning cannot simply be undone in a few days. It is not enough to understand the technique intellectually, one must also put in the work.

It is not enough to only have eyes, one must also have legs.

For me, this was the hardest part. One of the things I learned about myself is that I am actually innately incredibly lazy. My mind didn’t want to put in the work. I understood everything perfectly: the technique, the process, what I was feeling, what I was supposed to do. I soared through incredible highs and plummeted to some scary troughs.

But my mind would jump to every potential distraction that arose like a monkey to an unguarded banana. “Oh, I need to pee.” “I need some water.” “What is this strange bug doing on the floor.” “How can I sneak an extra piece of coconut back to my room.”

Not itching when my body told me to scratch it. Not wiping the sweat away for the sixteenth time in an hour. Keeping with the flow of the technique despite the numbness in my feet, the pain in my back, the urge to get up and stretch my legs or the stifling heat hanging in the air because the fans stopped working.

This is where the work lies.

Can you become comfortable with the uncomfortable. Can you surrender to your non-surrender. Can you  keep sitting – keep going – knowing that you are perfectly, 100% okay…even when your emotions and thoughts and feelings are buzzing around like an overcrowded theme park.

Vipassana is an incredibly difficult undertaking, hands-down the most challenging thing I’ve ever done in my life. Yet, at the same time, hands-down the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done in my life. I have since completed a second course in Thailand and plan on completing another one in 2020.

Three years later I am still reaping the benefits from these ten days of utter intensity. There is not a single day that goes by in which I do not think about one element or another that I learned in Vipassana. The technique works, whether I am sitting down for my morning meditation, in line at the supermarket or frantically re-booking a flight at the airport because I booked it for a full month afterward (yes, this happened today).

I can more easily separate my Self from my thoughts, observe my tendencies and patterns, and create just a liiiittle bit more space between what’s happening outside and what’s happening inside.

This practice has the power to transform lives, if you are open.

What’s beyond the door that Vipassana opens is something that cannot be put into words, but only felt experientially. When you do feel called to do a course, do yourself a favor and don’t hesitate. It may well be the most monumental experience of your life.