10 days of Silence (1) : Vipassana

My path of mediation

In 2010 I took my first meditation course because   I had a lot of stress and problems focusing. It was an introduction into different styles of meditation. The teacher recommended us that if you want to get the meditation into your daily routine you have to do it at least for 40 days in a row. So I started a 40 day challenge . After a week I already noticed tiny little changes in the chaos in my head, which made me decide to explore the world of mediation.

Ever since it has been a bumpy road with really intense practices and but also  months of hardly any mediation. But every time I came back to it. When I lived in the Netherlands I joined a Zen Budhist  group for a weekly meditation practice which gave me a stronger routine. In my teacher trainings several meditations techniques where presented as well.  I managed the last year to have a 80% steady daily practice of 20 to 30 minutes a day.

Vipassana

Four years ago I heard for the first time about the Vipassana mediation, a 10 day  silence course. Sometimes  you hear about course, a holiday destination, a person, an object  and then all of a sudden it seems to be everywhere and everyone you meet knows about it. Maybe you experienced it yourself as well. I believe that when this happens it has something to tell you.

This is what happened to me with Vipassana. All of a sudden I heard about it everywhere and in couple of weeks’ time I met several people that joined the course and told me how much it changed their lives. I felt it was something special and I was determined to do it as well. In 2013 I  signed up but eventually I didn’t went  eventually because of our move to Norway. In hindsight  I was not ready for it by that time. During my stay in India this year I spoke with someone about the course again and this time I knew I was ready for it and signed up for a course in the Netherlands. 17th  July it all started. It turned out to be a mind-blowing experience.

During the course note books were not allowed, so no journaling, which added value for me in hindsight , in order to BE in the moment and in the meditation.

But after the course I felt the need write, so that is what I did the last week, simply writing without any predefined purpose . This really helped me to process all that happened in the meditation.

Now I am back I’ve got a lot of questions from people about my experience and I therefore I decided to dedicate a couple  of blogs to it. In those blogs I will describe my 10 days in silence. It will be a personal blog where I also will relate to different theoretical aspects and make a link to daily life, food, essential oils and music.

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This blog is based on my personal experiences and is not a description of the course outline. It is not my intention to teach this practice in any way. The experiences of attending a Vipassana course and the effect of it will differ per person. For more information about the t course you can check the dhamma website.