VIPASSANA MEDITATION: 5 BENEFITS OF TAKING AN ANNUAL OFF-GRID RETREAT IN SILENCE
What is Vipassana
Imagine… spending 20 hours a day with your eyes closed. You sit for 13 hours meditating, three of them without moving even a toe, and one hour led in discourse by a teacher. You will receive two meals a day, one at 6:30 am and one at 11 am. You will sleep on a wooden plank with a small mattress and a pillow. You will have no phone, computer, or other electronic devices and no books to read, paper to write on, or journaling. You will respect Noble Silence which means no talking, no looking at other people, no interaction with others or the outside world in any form. This day I am describing, you will repeat it 10 times. Could you do it?
The answer is YES! You can if you commit to it diligently and patiently. I did it, so you can. Yes, it was hard. Personally, it was the physical aspect that was challenging. I had the feeling when I woke up on the third day that I had run two marathons in a row. I was exhausted. But a few days later, things got better and by day 8, I was feeling rested and not sore anymore. Things had shifted mentally and physically. My mind was laser-sharp, and I felt very open physically, as though I had done a yoga class every day. That retreat was the 10 day Vipassana meditation.
You may ask why push yourself to these limitations of total silence and physical discomfort, even pain? The goal is not to torture yourself. The goal is to sharpen the mind in a way that it can observe the ache, the pain, the itching sensations without reacting to it. The concept is to observe reality as it is and not react to it. You observe the sensations in your body and do this with equanimity. What does this mean? You don’t label the sensation in a sense of; I like/dislike it or it is pleasurable/unpleasurable. I want more of this (craving, clinging) or I don’t want it (aversion). Instead, you observe it as it is. When you do this, you can reach the unconscious part of your mind where you have stored negative thought-sensations. You have created a mind-habit that keeps you in this state of misery and suffering. The good news is that you can get out of it.
But first, what is the cause of our misery? Two things:
Craving or clinging: I want more money, a bigger home, a new promotion, a nicer car. All that makes you feel miserable when you cannot reach it or when it moves away. You become attached to it and start craving more of it
Aversion: we don’t want unpleasant things, so we want to avoid them. I don’t want to go under the cold shower, I don’t want to drive to work with all the traffic, I don’t want to meet that person or have this difficult conversation. Whichever action that you don’t like or unpleasant feeling you experience, you then try to suppress it by turning your head away from it
Your brain is wired this way, especially in the western world where we are attached to many things from the external environment.
How can we break free from this misery or this state of mind and be happy in life?
The answer is simple: equanimity. The law of nature says that everything rises and passes away. Don’t be attached to it. Yes, we all want more of the good things in life and less of the bad. Just remember that whatever it is that appears, whether painful or pleasurable, it will pass away and rise again in the future. This is the law of nature: impermanence. Everything comes and goes and it is the same in your body. You can experience a pleasurable sensation but it won’t stay forever. Same for an unpleasant, even painful sensation, it will go away.
During the mediation, the technique is to scan your body and just observe the impermanence of the sensation with equanimity. At the beginning it is difficult but with training and many hours spent sitting, a breakthrough will occur at some point where you can direct the mind away from the painful sensation and release it. Your mind and body (matter) become one and you can feel a flow of energy running from head to toes and toes to head and freely throughout your body. With this, you become aware of your physical sensations and your thoughts. You will discover that several painful body experiences are connected to negative patterns that you have stored in your unconscious. These experiences (physically unpleasant sensations and mental negative thoughts) will connect and dissolve themselves.
Why do we have to go to the unconscious part of the mind rather than staying in the conscious and/or subconscious level of the mind? The reason is simple. If you stay on the conscious level, you will be aware of a thought or a feeling (like anger, frustration, sadness). However, you will use your intellect to either suppress it (by changing the thought or distracting your mind with something else) or you will express it either physically by taking an action or verbally by saying something you might regret later. In these two processes, you have never addressed the source or cause of the feeling. Then, it will become stored, first in your subconscious and later, through repetition, in your unconscious. Now, imagine, you have played out and multiplied many negative thoughts in your life either by craving or averting them. You repeat the same process over and over unconsciously. That is why you become more miserable in your life and see happiness as something unattainable for you.
Nonetheless, happiness is your birthright. The unconscious mind is very conscious of two things, natural breath, and bodily sensations.
For example, our organs work independently from our will, on an unconscious level. We have no control over it. We are not conscious of what is going on within, such as our digestive system. Our breath is unique. We unconsciously breathe, for example, when we sleep. However, we can control it partially by holding it in or breathing more lightly or heavily. But we cannot control it 100%. This is one of the keys to opening the door to our unconscious mind. When you get angry or upset, have you noticed that your breathing becomes faster and heavier? Did you do this on purpose consciously or was it unconscious? You get the point.
The second key to the unconscious is our bodily sensations. When you sense something through your sensors (eyes, ears, nose, skin, and tongue) you know that something is happening within your body. Maybe you feel butterflies, tingling, aching, or an uncontrollable nervous movement of your limbs or head. The unconscious is 24/7 aware of sensations and reacting to them. Therefore, during the 10 days of Vipassana Meditation, we focus on the breath and bodily sensations. We want to purify the unconsciousness where all the cause of our misery is stored by peeling them away layer by layer. Yes, it is challenging work and physically unpleasant. However, after careful practice, a heavy load of negativity is released. We observe the pain or the pleasant sensation with equanimity knowing that the law of nature is impermanence. Everything will rise and pass away. By being neutral to the sensation or the thought, it loses its power. In the last two days of the process; I was able to feel a knot in my neck or my back and observe it with equanimity and then move on throughout the body. Within a few minutes, the knot was dissolved, and the pain was gone. I was able to focus my mind on what is and not what I wanted it to be. I was observing the true reality which can only be observed within the frame of the body.
We all have our own truth, our own path. However, it does not have to be a path or a life of misery, craving the good things and avoiding the things that we don’t want. There is a middle path where we can fully enjoy precious moments and acknowledge the tough times without craving or averting. This middle path is non-attachment. Everything rises and passes away. Happy moments will come back as the challenges. Accept that this is the law of nature.
The Vipassana Meditation was an extraordinary experience. I will share with you my 5 major benefits of getting off-grid and staying focused in silence.
1. Focus
I will not go into detail about how the Vipassana technique works. You need to experience it yourself as everyone has a different experience. It is important to keep an open mind and not ask too many questions from others about their experience or what to expect. Go with a blank slate, trust the process, and follow your own journey. Have faith that you are capable.
What I noticed when I came back, is a new capability to stay very focused. I am a focused person by nature but this meditation took me to another level. I am much more aware of subtle sensations in my body and in the outside world. I notice more details. My listening skills have improved. It is as though I understand people on a deeper level. I can focus on the core of the message. My mind has become really sharp. I can focus on what matters most and prioritize what needs to be done in the moment to move the needle forward towards what I want to achieve in life. It feels as though I discovered a hidden door that gave me access to another part of my brain, a part with sharper focus and awareness.
Now, ask yourself, would you be willing to be challenged and pushed to your own limits to discover this hidden door? Wouldn’t this be a small price to pay knowing that you will have access to a sharper mind if you practice in life what you have learned in 10 days?
2. What matters most
Being disconnected from the outside world, from loved ones, and having no means to connect with them forced me to really look at my life and see what matters most. First, I thought what was important in my life was to connect with people. I wanted to meet new friends. I wanted to create new connections. I was always looking forward to having deeper connections, growing my network, and my business. I lost my family in tragic circumstances, and I was always hoping to rebuild one. I thought that these things will make me happy.
Well, what really came back to me after these 10 days was my dog Bodhi. He is all I have. He is my family. He is what matters most. He is a 13-year-old yellow lab and unfortunately not doing well. He is physically super fit and would love to jump through the waves in the ocean. But he cannot anymore. He has laryngeal paralysis, and he has a lot of difficulty breathing when it is hot or when he plays. I wish now that I would have spent more time with him on the beach. He loved it so much.
What matters most now is to really focus, every day, on what makes him feel special and happy. His days are numbered. What matters most is to spend time with mother nature, loved ones, and animals. It is not the business, the future friendships, the next event that matters. It is what you are doing now for others knowing that we all have a limited number of days on earth. Now, I plan more time around creating new experiences with the people who matter, and with my dog Bodhi who is the most loyal and compassionate friend I have. This connection is what matters most.
So, for you, what matters most today? I really mean today and not tomorrow. You may have multiple thoughts and multiple “objects of attention” that matter most. Which is the one that really matters? Do you know it? What are you planning to do about it, in this present moment?
3. Mastery of the mind
At the end of the course, we were able to share experiences. People of all ages, all backgrounds, ethnicities, religious beliefs, and educations were there. What struck me the most was when I shared a conversation with two people. One was a famous tech innovator in Silicon Valley and the other had three PhDs in the medical research field. One of them came for the third time and the other for the fifth time. I asked them why they decided to come here again. They both gave similar answers.
They wanted to master the mind. Both had very intense lives and they had to think out of the box. Every day they were faced with multiple problems to solve. They explain that the more they practice Vipassana, the more creative they were. They were able to master the mind. They understood how the conscious and subconscious parts of the mind worked but they didn’t know that it was possible to access the unconscious part of the mind, the part where we hold grief, blockages, unhealthy patterns, and habits of thinking. Opening the door to the unconscious level of the mind opened the door to new insights and new ways of solving problems. I personally resonated with this statement. I was able to filter a behavior or a way of thinking based on an old pattern embedded in my unconscious. I was able to bring these back to the surface, let them go, and replace them with new habits and patterns of thinking which enable me to have more clarity.
Don’t you want to have more access to your mind? Don’t you want to master your mind by letting go of the old, unhealthy, negative patterns of thinking? Removing them at the root level which is in the unconscious mind? It is the first thing to do if you want to have a happier life that is sustainable over a long period of time.
4. Clarity
I think I will not be wrong if I say that all of us, sometimes in our life, hit a crossroads where we need to make a drastic decision. It could be changing job, moving to another country, getting married, having kids, leaving a successful career to follow our passion, going through a divorce, or going through a traumatic experience that derails what we planned in life.
When I was driving to the center, I was fortunate to share the ride with an Indian lady who was working in a big biotech company. She was passionate about Indian philosophy and taught it at the local temple. Her son did the Vipassana retreat 2 years previously. Then her daughter-in-law, her husband, and now finally, her. The entire family didn’t want to share their experience until she had done it as they didn’t want to influence her. The only thing her son shared with her is that, in his very demanding job, he was able to see with clarity the path he needed to follow. I started to experience the same thing. Every time I was brainstorming about strategies, business, or personal things, the solution came to me easily and fluidly. No scratching my head for hours, no anxiety of not knowing the how or what or when… it all came naturally.
By sharpening the mind with focus, knowing what matters most in your life, and mastering all the levels of the mind you will find with clarity solutions to your challenges or problems. Things will come into your life naturally. You will be able to see opportunities that surround yourself. This is all possible with practice if you decide to commit and work diligently.
5. Outside world distraction
I was a bit concerned to have no communication or news from the outside world for 10 days. I speak 4 languages and I am used to watching the news around the world (it gives me different perspectives). Emails and zoom calls are some of my daily activities. Now I had no computer, no cellphone, no talking (Noble Silence), and no outreach beyond the boundaries of the center. That was a bit uncomfortable at first.
What I discovered is that all these things were just noise. Do I really need to watch the news multiple times a day? Did the world and my business collapse by not answering emails or having zoom calls scheduled for 10 days. What about the social media, right? Would I be impatient to talk to someone? The answer was always NO!
Most of these things were distractions. I felt so much more at peace and happy to not hear every day the negative propaganda of the news. I discovered that when I opened my email box with hundreds of unread emails, that most of them were irrelevant. I didn’t even open them, they ended up directly in the trash. Do I miss the superficial conversations, do I miss talking? Not at all. When I came back home, in the evening, I went to eat at a restaurant. This was a mistake. After 10 days of silence, it was overwhelming to hear all the noise around me. I didn’t want to engage in the conversation with the guy next to me who was talking about all the nice things he has in his life and all the things he lost in his latest divorce. I didn’t want to hear that. There was no depth in this conversation, and I didn’t care.
When you go to a retreat for many days (you don’t have to do this one for 10 days, there are many other options) and you are disconnected from the outside world, you will notice all the bad habits and all the distractions that you have in your life that take your energy, your money, and your time. You will come back with a new sense of what matters most for you and a new perspective about what is important in life. Don’t be surprised that you probably will redefine the group of people you really want to spend time with, the hobbies you want to share, the new healthy activities or healthy habits you want to start. You will gain more wisdom about life, people, nature, and what matters for you. Transformation will occur so be prepared, it is inevitable!
Final words
If you find yourself wondering if you could do it or if it is something for you, let me reassure you that the answer is a big YES! In our extremely busy lives, surrounded by an army of electronic gadgets all interconnected through an ocean of apps and automations it is important to take, at least annually, time to reset in silence and peace, and focus within yourself. If I can give three more suggestions to you, they would be:
Don’t ask people what their own experience was if you want to join a Vipassana meditation or any retreat. You don’t want to bias your mind with expectations. You don’t want to have an aversion or craving to get (or don’t get) what they experienced. Everyone has a different background and life journey. Your experience will be unique. Don’t google everything trying to know every detail. Have faith in yourself and your capability to handle it. Be open to what it is. Go there without expectations, start with a blank slate. Trust that everything will be okay. You can always share your experiences afterward with others who already did it.
Having an annual getaway for you is important, for at least three days. Often it takes time to unwind our busy lives and find the place within that is calm, open, and ready to learn and be transformed. You don’t have to go to an official organized retreat. I know many of you cannot because you are in a season in life where you don’t have the time or the financial means to do it. But, I am confident that you all can find a long weekend during the year that you can spend in nature silently, without a phone, a tablet, a computer, or someone to distract you. Just be, observe, and be aware of what is happening within you… take time to observe what really is, your own reality within, and your own truth and wisdom.
Nothing will happen overnight. Yes, after 10 days, I could see a transformation. However, to keep this new pattern and habits, I had to work diligently, patiently, and consistently every day. It is like anything in life. Losing weight is one side of the coin. Keeping the weight where you want to be over a long period of time is the other side of the coin. Creating new habits takes time. Amazing results and new, happy, unexpected things will come to your life. But you will have to dedicate time, every day, to nurture this transformation. You will have to work on it every day until it becomes second nature for you. It is worth it. Who does not want to have a happier life? We can all have it if we commit with discipline to mastering our mind. Every evening I write the same sentence in my journal: “I am in control of my thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and outcomes”. It all starts with the mind. So take some time, every day for the self-care of your mind. It will be transformational. Start small but start today.
Take your calendar and reserve some time off where you will take a retreat, focusing silently on yourself only, without any distractions, whether at a retreat or not. Give yourself this gift. Your loved ones will feel it and will be thankful to you for taking the time to become a better, happier, and wiser person. May you live peacefully, in harmony, and be happy.
- Hubert
YourHPcoach
P.S. Hey guys, Hubert here!
Do me a favor, would you? If you liked this blog, would you share it with somebody that might like it?
Would you mind leaving a comment below and maybe sharing about a subject you are interested in?
That would mean the world to me. My only humble desire is to serve you and the community better.
I really appreciate it!
It is now time to bring your life and your business to the next level of success!
Do you need more advanced tools and strategies for becoming more productive, influential, and successful while working from home with the kids playing in the next room?
Are you struggling to have clarity and find a deeper purpose in your life so that you can feel more vibrant, alive, and fulfilled than you are today?
I can help. So let’s connect and have a 15 minutes chat and see how I can support you.