Left in a snowstorm, came home to spring flowers.
My husband must be getting tired of hearing me answer the question, “What was it like at the 10-day silent meditation retreat?” My reply evolves in subtle ways with each passing day.
My first response is always, “This was NOT a retreat. It was hard, not relaxing.” And then I get caught up in the weeds of the parts that were hard for me personally.
But now, ten days after my return, perhaps because I’ve given expression in those conversations with family and friends to the hard parts and watched the profound lessons come into focus, the sky has cleared. I feel a general sense of joy, contentment, and yes, accomplishment.
Did you know that our brains are wired to prioritize difficulties we face—the hard times in life? Our limited brain bandwidth requires choices about what memories to pay attention to, which information we allow to come to the surface to inform our perspectives and decision making.
Researchers have found that most people spend much more time mulling over perceived negatives than they do on positive experiences and outcomes. It seems to be a protective mechanism to keep us on the lookout for potential future threats. If you’re one of those people who always sees the glass as half empty rather than half full, don’t be too hard on yourself. Blame it on science, but realize that you have the power to change that wiring.
The awesome thing about mindfulness practice is that it gives you the tools to be more intentional in where you direct your attention and the way you frame your experience. You develop greater control over that thought filter in your head.
When you really start observing these dynamics, you’ll find that it takes a lot less energy to focus on the good stuff—the silver linings, gratitude, and other positive outcomes. The result is higher volumes of happiness in your life. My former economist language for this = paying attention to the positive side of the equation is a much more efficient use of your resources.
So I’m intentionally going to make you wait one more week before I get into the hard parts of the retreat, my personal pain points. Yes, there’s juicy stuff there, but first I want to rest my attention (and celebrate!) the cool parts of my 10-Day Vipassana Meditation Course at Dhamma Delaware.
Heads up, this post is a bit longer than usual. But that’s a good thing, since I have a lot of positive stuff to report, right?
Top Ten Positive Takeaways from My 10-Day Vipassana Course
1. The rules and structure at a Goenke course are very effective in minimizing distractions, which facilitates present moment awareness. As I said in last week’s post, the combination of no phones, no speaking to other participants, no technology, no reading, no physical contact, and no alcohol or other intoxicants was a little bit like present moment awareness shock therapy. When the fire hose of incoming information is turned off, all you’re left with is your own thoughts to process. You are able to see more clearly how many stories you can produce around one single thought or subtle external input. This is the first step to taking control of your own thinking habits and basing your responses on the reality of the present moment.
2. Greater focus. In the step-by-step approach to teaching Vipassana that Goenke employs during this 10-day course, it seems impossible to not come away with greater focus. The first day, your only job is to focus your attention on the sensory experience of your respiration at the point of your nostrils. Ten hours of that. The second day you focus only on the sensory experience of your respiration below your nose and above your upper lip (10 hours). The third day the focus expands to the triangle above your upper lip including the entire nose (again, 10 hours!). The fourth day the actual Vipassana technique is introduced, which takes that focus on sensation to various parts of the body, a super-intense body scan if you will. Each time your mind wanders, you come back to the anchor of body sensation. Each time you bring your wandering mind back to your point of focus, it’s like a bicep curl for your brain. These are the same types of techniques that I’ve practiced for years with mindfulness meditation, so my focus was already pretty good. But there’s always room for improvement, and a hundred hours of practice over a ten day period took my focus to the next level.
3. Creative ideas. My meditation practice has always been a huge support to my creative work, business development, and general problem solving. The intensity and length of my sessions in Delaware sparked some beautiful new ideas. I don’t go into meditation sessions with the intention to think up new ideas. Quite the opposite. My intention is to turn away from thought and towards my body’s sensory experience. The process of simply noticing when thoughts float in, then releasing them gently to return to my sensory anchor of choice, clears thought clutter (I call this “thought-weeding”) and leads to a spaciousness that allows creative ideas to surface on their own, often when I least expect it. Just a couple of the ideas I came home with are a cover design for the Reflections Journal I’ll be creating this year for my 30-Day Meditation Challenge students and the intention to learn a new photography technique that I realized meshes beautifully with mindfulness.
4. Mindful eating skill-building. In the context of meditating 10 hours a day, meals became an activity to look forward to, not only to fill my belly, but also as an experience in and of itself. Taking away external distractions (phones, speaking, reading) while eating turns up the volume of your senses. Tastes, aromas, textures, and gratitude for the food and where it came from—especially since it was prepared by so-called “old” students donating their time to the center—were thrown into sharp relief. It was fascinating to hear how much noise is still involved in a group of people eating even when nobody is speaking. The clink of a teaspoon stirring honey into tea, the clank of forks and knives against plate surfaces, chair legs scraping against the floor. Some students intentionally lifted their chairs to move them to avoid that scraping sound, set their cups down gently and noiselessly on the table, did what they could to not disturb the silence. I have no idea if the men made similar efforts in their dining hall (I’ll come back to the gender thing in next week’s post, where I’ll talk about my personal challenges. Teaser: I learned I have a lot of old feminist and boy mom baggage). We were served breakfast at 6:30 am, a wholesome, hearty lunch at 11:00 am, and simple fruit and tea at 5:00. Old students (returning participants) had an additional rule of having only tea and no fruit in the evening. I noticed I wasn’t really hungry in the evening, possibly because there was so little calorie expenditure, so from Day 5 onward I also skipped the fruit in the evening to see what that was like. It was surprisingly easy, since I was only going on my body’s true signals, rather than creating a story around when and why I “needed” to eat.
5. Power of group meditation. My personal wiring (non-joiner) and busy life raising kids (travel soccer took priority over group meetings) translated into cultivating my meditation practice almost exclusively at home. I’ve had relatively little exposure to group meditation given that I’ve maintained a daily practice for many years. So it was cool to experience the greater intensity of the energy in the meditation hall at Dhamma Delaware, similar to what I felt during a previous meditation retreat at Yogaville, VA (read about that here). We had assigned spots based on our meditation experience, with the “old students” in the front rows. One of those students was Laura, the lovely woman I mentioned in my “before the retreat” post. We bonded while driving into a blizzard, both of us OK with a last minute departure decision based more on our instincts than on the visible weather conditions. Laura sat directly in front of me in the hall. Whereas I jumped up at every opportunity to take a break, Laura stayed put, hardly moving a muscle, it seemed to me. Her presence anchored me, supported me, inspired me, and absolutely deepened my experience. The energy of a single person is contagious; the collective energy of that group of heart-centered participants was transformative.
6. Greater understanding of “equanimity” and how liberating it can feel. One of the objectives of Vipassana and mindfulness practice in general is to approach life with a calm, balanced, and non-judgmental mind. The Buddhists refer to this as equanimity. I’m not a Buddhist, so I hadn’t spent a lot of time pondering this word or what it felt like physiologically. This course showed me that no matter how equanimous or non-judgmental I think I am on the surface, some seeds are planted pretty deep that still lead to negative physical responses and reactivity. I learned to sit with those feelings and confront my aversions and judgments. It got pretty ugly at times, but in a couple of cases that you’ll hear more about in the next post, I managed to reach a point of acceptance that stopped the flow of stress chemicals triggered in the early days of the course. Shifting my inner balance like that felt monumental.
7. Greater resilience. Coming back to meditation session after meditation session for ten hours a day, ten days straight, when you know it will be mentally exhausting and physically painful (before you learn the pain goes away), builds resilience. Enough said.
8. Spiritual connection. Though I’m not wired for organized religion, I had some profound moments of spiritual connection over the course of the ten days. For those of you who know me as a practical, grounded, former economist type, don’t be frightened by this. Though I feel vulnerable sharing this, I had some beautiful interactions with a friend I introduced on the blog shortly before she passed, with my dad (here’s a piece about him), and with my old dog Spirit. Healing happened, and it was powerful and soothing and love-filled. I’ll stop there, since that’s pretty uncomfortable for me to write about. And just like the creative ideas outcome described above, I did not go into the course expecting to connect with friends and family from my past. But that’s what happened for me a few times. The no talking rule was important, since comparing personal experiences during the program would create all sorts of head craziness and set you back.
9. Reframed my perception of what I am capable of. If I had known beforehand what would be entailed in this particular program, especially the initial physical pain and mental exhaustion that result from meditating for ten hours a day for ten days straight, I honestly don’t know if I would have signed up. I probably would have continued to look for a less rigorous silent retreat that met the requirements for my Search Inside Yourself teacher training certification. But having learned to pay attention to open doors rather than waste energy pushing against closed doors, it just felt like this was the program I was supposed to do. Because of that, I didn’t do a whole lot of advance research on the Goenke model before diving in. I dealt with it as it came. So even though I did NOT choose to join my husband and sons when they jumped off the highest bungy jump bridge in the world, I can say that I did do THIS. And I am stronger for it.
10. Greater insight and self awareness. Yes.
Thanks for sticking with me through all of that! The final post in this series will describe my personal challenges (ie Martha’s personal baggage revealed).
And in case you’re interested…
What is Vipassana Meditation?
Vipassana is thought to be the oldest Buddhist meditation practice, rediscovered and taught by Gotama the Buddha more than 2500 years ago. (Buddha wasn’t just one person, by the way – Buddha simply means “enlightened one.”) In the West, Vipassana is also known as Insight Meditation.
S.N. Goenke, the teacher of the technique at dhamma.org centers around the world (including Dhamma Delware where I was) defines Vipassana as “seeing things as they really are.” In a Tricycle.org article that you can check out yourself, What Exactly Is Vipassana Meditation? Bhante Henepola Gunaratana defines Vipassana as “clear awareness of exactly what is happening as it happens.”
The meditation technique trains us to closely observe the breath and body sensations, with a balanced, non-judgmental approach. Buddhists use the words “equanimous mind” and “equanimity” a lot. Since my mindfulness journey has been secular (and I always have to stop and think “what does equanimous mean again?”), it’s easier for me to access terms like “non-judgmental.”
Regardless of the semantics, the technique teaches us to turn our attention inward, noticing distractions as they arise. These can either be thoughts or physical feelings across the spectrum of uncomfortable to pleasurable. We learn to observe what pulls us away from our focus without losing our mental balance. The practice is to avoid labeling sensations or thoughts as good or bad, just accepting the reality of the experience without attaching a story to it, then gently releasing and returning to your chosen anchor of focus (the breath or body).
Goenke explains, “The more one practices this technique, the more quickly negativities will dissolve. … A balanced mind not only becomes peaceful, but the surrounding atmosphere also becomes permeated with peace and harmony, and this will start affecting others, helping others too.”
I can confirm this has been my experience (my book Blooming into Mindfulness chronicles those impacts). Even though Vipassana is a new word to me, this is the technique I’ve learned from various Mindfulness Meditation teachers and have practiced on an almost daily basis for about eight years.
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