In one word: BRUTAL!  Who knew sitting around doing and saying nothing for 10 days could be so physically and mentally challenging?  But it was.

What is a Vipassana retreat?

One goes to a Vipassana Meditation Centre to learn to master and purify the mind with techniques passed down from Buddha around 2,500 years ago. I’m not going to go into the intricacies of the technique(s) here.  If you want to know that, you have to go and do it, as the entire point of this course is not intellectualising it, but doing and experiencing it.

But what I can tell you is the science checks out.  It turns out Buddha was into quantum physics and neuroscience before it was cool.  I am far from an expert on either of these things but I have dabbled (Lynne McTaggart has some really accessible books which delve into quantum physics for the lay person, and I did some neuroscience research for a client last year which included how our emotions have chemical signatures which release and can be measured in the brain and body in everyone, and are followed by feelings about those emotions, which are different for everyone based on their life experiences and temperament, which drive our unconscious physical responses).

Many of us have sensed or had it pointed out to us when something is psychosomatic for us, or “concerned with bodily symptoms caused by mental or emotional disturbance.”  Or we have been told to exercise “mind over matter.”  And many religions tell us we have to “go within” to search for answers but do not practically show us how.

Apparently Buddha was an atheist which I was also happy to hear! Since I was a child I felt most organised religions were elaborate population control mechanisms that did not hold up to scrutiny, and I had little tolerance for them.  So if this had any of that in it, I would have been out in a flash.  But according to our teacher, Buddha preached that no God or higher power is going to bestow riches on you, or absolve you from your sins, but your path to salvation and enlightenment is to go within and then a bunch of other stuff about the laws of nature.

Vipassana is a “How to” course on going within to achieve mind over matter.  It is self help on steroids, and definitely for you if you want some of that without having to talk about anything!

I did it at the Darma Rasmi Vipassana Centre on the Sunshine Coast in Australia.  It is a beautiful centre run entirely by volunteers and on donations (you decide what/if you will contribute) where they seem to have thought of everything to make your stay as comfortable as possible so you can concentrate on what you are there for.

It is also SUPER Aussie with mobs of kangaroos hanging out around the property (I counted 16 one lunchtime lounging on the small lawn outside the female cafeteria including two with joey’s hanging out of their pouches), kookaburras laughing at you at inopportune moments, and a raft of other native wildlife.

I definitely recommend it as a place to do this if you are interested in undertaking such madness. 

What made me decide to do it?

I was in my mid 20s the first time I realised there was more going on with my subconscious than met the eye, and I was not as in the driver’s seat as I thought.

I was being guided in a visualisation to “cut the chord” with a particularly horrendous boss.  I sat with my eyes closed and was to imagine said boss floating out in front of me.  Then I was to breath in deeply, and breath out white light to him and around him.  The more I breathed, the more surrounded by the white light he became.  This chord of white light connected us and enabled this light to go around him. 

When he was nicely submerged, I was then to get some giant scissors or a knife, and cut the chord between us.  I would then watch him float off into the distance and out of my life.  Perfect.  Easy.  Only when I tried to cut the chord, it wouldn’t cut.  Not only would it not cut, the chord turned into this black, stringy, weird substance which was impervious to sharp implements.  WTAF?  I couldn’t believe it!  This was MY visualisation and I was telling my mind to cut this chord, why was it not happening?

I didn’t tell the guy who was guiding me I was unsuccessful, but I kept doing the process in my mind from time to time for some time after that until I was eventually able to mentally cut the chord.  Soon after that, I got a great job elsewhere and moved on.

In my 30s when trying to sort through some stuff in my life, I came across Byron Katie’s book, Loving What Is which was a really nice, practical method for questioning your thoughts and not blindly trusting what just flows through your brain.  This was a game changer for me understanding and gaining control over the narratives in my mind.

The first time I heard about silence retreats like this, I was in my 20s and it sounded like my idea of hell.  I have never been a meditator, but somehow back then I ended up at a couple of events every now and again, and sitting still and trying to ignore all your itches etc… was too much for me. 

But somehow when my friend told me about this one, it piqued my interest.  When the courses become available for booking at Dharma Rasmi, they book out almost instantly, so I tried a couple of years ago and was not successful.  When I relayed these past unsuccessful efforts to this friend a couple of months ago, she said she and her husband were experts at getting the forms submitted at lightning speed, so she would do it for me.  And that was it.  I was in!

What about this brutality??

I expected 10 days silence to be a mental challenge.  If you have no access to outside stimulation, and not just your devices, but books, pens and paper, and so on, and you cannot communicate with others, that is 10 days with just what is going on inside your head.  You are bound to get a mental clean out, or at least get to the bottom of a few things.  But I was not expecting the brutal physical pain I experienced. 

To be fair, I did not have to do it as tough as I did.  Each day we spent countless hours in the meditation hall.  When we first went in there, we were allocated our own spots which had a small carpet, a blanket, and a rectangular pillow with a small sheet over it we could sit ‘comfortably’ cross legged on.  Up the back of the hall there were a range of pillows and blankets we could use to make ourselves more comfortable.  Some people with physical ailments were given chairs or back supports. 

On the first day I struggled with not cutting circulation in my legs from my bum, but worked out two rolled up blankets on top of the original set up allowed my bum to get in a groove where blood would continue to flow.  Otherwise I was resolved to stay cross legged, even as many much younger and fitter looking people succumbed to the allure of back rests and elaborate pillow set ups.  If the monks could do it, so could I.

On Day 4 I experimented with adding an extra pillow to give my knees some relief and they switched up the meditation techniques in the afternoon.  I sat for two hours with my entire torso screaming with fire-like pain.  This was new.  I sat through instructions which specifically said this was not an exercise in torture.  I was being tortured.  Perhaps it was time to get a chair.  But the monks don’t use chairs, right? 

I decided I would talk to the teacher about it in the special time after class we could approach her.  I had to talk to her anyway if I wanted to get the chair I so desperately craved as someone would have to get it from somewhere.

“Is there any benefit to me continuing to torture myself sitting cross legged, or can I get a…”

“What is wrong with you?” she interrupted.

“My entire torso is screaming and my knees are killing me, I think if I just had a chair…” I appealed.

“Your back is straight.  You do yoga.  If you have a back rest you will not get the same lessons.  You are fine.”

“You don’t understand, my knees are killing me…”

“HARDEN THE F%&# UP!” may not have been the EXACT words this lovely older Indian lady said, I may be paraphrasing a little, but that is what I heard.

I smiled.  Okay.  This was how it was going to be.  I channelled Beatrix Kiddo (actor Uma Thurman’s character in the movie series Kill Bill*), and this woman was my Pai Mei (the Kung Fu master Bill sent Beatrix to, to turn her into the lethal weapon she becomes, and who beat her, deprived her of food, and subjected her to all kinds of painful and degrading training to achieve that goal).

If the fictitious Beatrix could endure what she did from Pai Mei, I could stay sitting unsupported while my body screamed, even if many around me had chosen a different path…  I had this.

The next day I faced similar torture.  If Beatrix could do it…  But they said in the instructions over and over again it should not be torture.  It was torture.  I am no stranger to pain, so for me to be saying this is not a small thing. 

The teacher called us up in small groups of five to check we were experiencing the techniques as we should.  She asked us one by one what sensations we were feeling and to name them.  Now was my chance.

“I am feeling some very strong sensations as well as some subtle ones,” I reported.

“Can you describe them for me?” she asked.

“Well for the strong ones; pain, throbbing, pulsating, ripping (I think I had a whole arsenal of words prepared I can’t remember now), and for the subtle ones, tingling, temperature changes…” I said.

“Come and see me in the interview room at lunchtime,” she instructed.

Yeeeeeeeeees!  I had finally gotten my point across!  The sweet relief of a chair, or at least a back rest would be mine, oh yes, it would be mine.

I strolled into her interview room after I finished lunch anticipating my sweet relief.

“Tell me about these sensations again,” she instructed.

I again went through the severity and the places I was feeling it, then informed her of my regular experience with pain and how this was a new level and in new and exciting places which made it harder to deal with.

“HARDEN THE F%&# UP Beatrix!” is again not EXACTLY what she said, but was again the message I received.  There would be no chair.  There would be no back rest.  This was my mind over matter cross to bare.

Who is Pai Mei anyway?

Day 7 elicited some rage from deep within me.  I had just spent around 45 minutes with my chest and lungs in a vice.  Yes, pain is not the only form of physical suffering one can elicit from oneself apparently.  When I was meditating comfortably in my room, I got spasms instead of pain just to mix things up also apparently.  This was my first emotional response from my practice, and it was quite the response. 

About a day or two before this, my two rolled up blanket system for keeping the blood flowing from my ass to my legs also began failing.  When this happened, I stretched my legs out in front of me to let the blood flow back in.  At this stage we were encouraged not to open our eyes or move but if we had to, to make our movements as small as possible. 

It was also written in a couple of places not to point our feet towards the stage where the teachers were because it was disrespectful.  I always attempted to sit at an uncomfortable angle (as if sitting with your legs out in front and your back straight for long periods was not uncomfortable enough) to accommodate this. 

But in this particular session it appeared I was not successful.  The course manager came up to me after the session and told me I had my feet pointing towards the front.

“I’m so sorry,” I offered.  “I usually try to make an effort, I must have made a mistake because my eyes were closed.  It won’t happen again.”

But inwardly I was still raging from whatever my chest vice released.  Couldn’t they see how hard I was trying and how much pain I was in?  What did it really matter with this feet pointing thing anyway?  What a stupid #$%^ing tradition!  Who cares about a bit of feet pointing???

After the break we were to watch a discourse for about an hour and a half in the meditation hall.  @#$% this.  This wasn’t the meditation.  I was getting a chair or a back.  But no, at this late stage there was nothing like that around, so I went up the back and sat against the back wall on top of a tall stack of hard large square pillows.  This gave me a new, expansive view over the whole meditation hall filled with about 100 people.

About half of them were in chairs or had back rests.  Some of the set ups were elaborate!  Leisa who joined the course with me, and with whom I could not make eye contact lest we broke the noble silence code, definitely had the best one.  She was sitting behind me so I hadn’t noticed it until that point.  At the end of the course we discussed it and worked out she used about 25 pillows of different shapes and sizes, and two blankets to support her structure.  She looked like she was stretched out on a couch in her surround sound media room at home, and was at any time about to pick up her remote control to change the atmosphere.  And her feet were pointing happily to the front where the teachers were.  Most people with back support or in chairs (about half) seemed oblivious to their scandalous feet pointing right at the teachers.

I don’t know if it was the ridiculousness of the situation, or the sheer relief of finally having back support, but my rage dissipated and I started laughing.  There are a million ways to look at such things.  I had read the rules and knew it was disrespectful to point my feet at the teachers, and even though I generally made the effort, I obviously had not been successful that particular session.  Who cared what anyone else was doing?  I chose to be flattered I was being held to a higher standard than many of the others there.

It was also at that moment I realised the teacher was not Pai Mei.  I was Pai Mei.  Pai Mei was the subconscious me throwing up these obstacles challenging me to become the master of my mind over matter.

The question now remains: Will the conscious me be Beatrix Kiddo, take the lessons offered no matter how brutal, and finally win Pai Mei over so he shows me the five point palm exploding heart technique / meaning of life?  Or will I be Ellie Driver (actor Darrel Hannah’s character in the Kill Bill movie series*) and kill him in retaliation for plucking my eye out, thereby losing any hope of mastering my mind, and be destined to live a life of deluded, blind misery?

Only time will tell…

It is different for everyone

Don’t let my tales of pain put you off.  There are lots of different ways to take this course.  Leisa did not experience anything like the physical pain I did from her surround sound media centre chair set up.  Her experience was more emotional.  It is also important to stress the pain did not continue outside of the meditation process for me.  I did not get any new physical ailments from the physicality and pain I experienced during the meditations, and the couple of people that have seen me since doing the course have commented on how much noticeably healthier I look since returning.  So there have been no lasting negative effects from it at least.

Other women I spoke to who chose to go for back support were actively encouraged to take this support by the very same teacher who discouraged me from taking it.  They described not just zero resistance, but active encouragement.  Our respective tortures seem to have been tailored for us!  But if I had insisted, they would have given it to me.  I did not HAVE to put myself through the physical pain I did.

That does not mean it will be easy for you if you are considering doing it.  You do not experience the lessons you need to learn from a practice like this from having a pleasant few days sitting around in a lovely mountain retreat.

Knowing now what I did not know then, would I change it up and have made it physically easier on myself?  No way.  I found through this suffering an endurance I did not know I had in me, and the challenges in the techniques were at a level I think were right to test and train me in my mind over matter journey.

It is not for the faint hearted, but if you got this far through this post and you are still thinking about doing it, I say go smash it!!

* Apologies to those of you who have not seen the two movies in the Kill Bill franchise.  Hopefully the analog made sense anyway…

The End

Thanks for reading.  I hope you enjoyed it.  If you did, please like, comment, and share on social media.  I’m on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Linkedin.

If you want to work with me, check out my website ClaireRWriter.com and book a meeting.

Until next time!

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