As the year draws to its end, people have been asking me what the best thing about my sabbatical year has been. 

That has been difficult to answer - not because I’m unsure, but because my answer is so clear.  One experience somehow encapsulated so much of what this year has taught me: ten days of Vipassana. 

I hesitated a long while before writing this.  Not because it wasn’t extraordinary, but because Vipassana is supremely intimate and personal.  It’s not an experience that can be replicated or fully described.  It must be lived.  10 days minimum.  When you do it, you understand why. 

But, after telling so many people so emphatically, “I tried this thing that was life-changing, but I can’t explain how”, I felt dissatisfied.  So, here I am, trying - inadequately - to put some of it into words in case it plants a small seed of curiosity.  🌱

(And if you end up doing it yourself one day, tell me, won’t you?! Let’s talk.)

What is Vipassana?

To understand Vipassana, you must be initiated in a particular way.  New students attend a 10-day residential course (two centres in the UK, many worldwide).  Silence is the foundation.  We start with confiscation: everything that could distract you is locked away.  No phones, no books, no writing, no music, no exercise.  No communicating with others - no talking, smiling, nodding or touching.  (And no touching yourself either if you catch my drift… hey - I’ve been asked!)  

All that remains is to sit… and meditate.  All day long. 

What would possess anyone to do this?  I’d had Vipassana on my ‘to-do’ list for about a decade, and I’m not even sure where I’d first heard about it.  I knew only that it was a rigorous kind of meditation, but little else.  This year, the ‘I don’t have time for this’ excuse was defunct - scared and deliberately minimally informed, I dove in.

What Ten Days Taught Me

I won’t outline the actual meditation technique; it’s not taught outside the container for good reason.  But here are a few things that stayed with me:

• Everything changes.  No - everything.  

• The body knows before the mind does.  

• You are capable of far more than your mind insists.

• Silence reveals what distraction hides. 

• Answers will surface on their own. 

All in all, this was the first time I practised meditation without any expectation of the outcome, to try it for its own sake with patience and acceptance of any or no revelations.  I didn’t do it to calm my mind, regulate my nervous system, or get happier. I didn’t over-research it.

I tried it out of curiosity - what would come out of deep silence? I learned things I never expected. 

The Lesson behind the Lesson: the Container

You may look at those lessons and think, ‘big deal…nothing new,’ and you’d be right.  None of these concepts embedded in the meditation were foreign to me.  Yoga teaches them all in various ways - impermanence, equanimity, observation, monkey mind, discipline. 

But Vipassana presses them into you.  Rather, it sort of steamrolls them into you.  Not because the teachings are new… but because the container is unlike anything you can imagine.  

Ten days of voluntary confinement create a pause so complete — and honestly,  alien to everyday life — that it rearranges something inside you and presents a new reality.  It reveals an understanding of universal teachings experientially rather than intellectually; why Buddha himself apparently taught meditation like this, and why he said, ‘Don’t take my word for it, try it yourself.’ 

Regardless of who first came up with this method, there is no requirement to enter into a belief system.  (No, it’s not a cult - I’ve been asked this too! 😂). The technique is clean and clinical, almost surgical in its simplicity.  No ritual.  No inspiring views.  No poetic imagination or visualisation.  Only observation of your own physical experience.

And in that container is offered something rare: the conditions to hear, see and feel things which you might never otherwise realise in daily life.   

And the conditions of the container?  

Time, silence, attention, practice. 

AKA Insight Meditation 

There is one aspect of the experience I feel compelled to share.

Once a day, you may briefly break the silence to ask the assistant teacher questions.  I had so many in the first few days... “Why this?  Why that?  What about this sensation?  Am I doing it right?”

Then something strange happened.

One day I planned to ask something but missed my chance.  I saved up the question, but in the morning meditation session the next day, the answer appeared, arising in my body…there.  As the days passed and more questions surfaced, the longer I sat, the answers followed ... ... by themselves.  

I stopped queuing for the teacher. 

It felt eerie and magical, like meeting an inner teacher that I need only trust would appear.  And when the course ended, others I spoke to described some version of the same thing.  It taught me something profound about inner wisdom — there is a place inside us that already knows so much.  Silence doesn’t create wisdom; it lets us hear it.  

“Trust the process” suddenly became as real AF. 

And the remarkable thing?  Vipassana is otherwise known as ‘insight meditation.’  It seems to give each person exactly the insight they need  - not what they necessarily want or expect.  Two people sit through the same ten days and emerge with entirely different things.  This is why the technique and container feel inexhaustible. 

Is Vipassana for you? 

‘Yoga on steroids’ seems like the best brief descriptor of Vipassana I can muster.  

I felt like ten years plus of yoga prepared the ground for this experience - it didn’t make me any ‘better’ at the meditation, it just opened my mind to receive what felt like the right practice at the right time. And yet, I certainly don’t think only experienced meditators or ‘yoga people’ can benefit from this incredible offering. In fact, prior experience of yoga could even be a hindrance - we have as much unlearning to do as learning, after all.  So if you can’t sit cross-legged or are a yoga novice… this doesn’t rule you out. 

As much as I would like everyone to have a remarkable experience like this, this is not entirely a persuasion piece. Vipassana is surely not for everyone.  There is a vetting process, usually a waiting list, and now I understand why.  This isn’t a restful retreat.  It is not relaxing.  It’s hard.  So hard.  Entered without willingness and open receptivity, I can see how this process could aggravate rather than illuminate.

Your sacred container

The residues of those ten days still reverberate through me now - even though I am not practicing the technique daily, and I know 10 days have only scratched the surface of this method.   

But here’s my honest take: I don’t know if Vipassana will be a forever-practice for me.  Maybe I will continue it, maybe I won’t.  But I do know - it has left an indelible imprint, I think, for all my life. And I hope that intentional silence, retreat and introspection will never be de-prioritised from my life again. 

This year, Vipassana has crystallised the themes which have enveloped me during my sabbatical, making clear the gifts of the year that have given me such grace:

Time, silence, attention, practice.

Perhaps this might serve as a reminder that there are depths within you that reveal themselves when you create the conditions to meet yourself. 

I suppose I’d invite you to consider - what might a container like Vipassana do for you?  

The method is beautiful, but this technique claims no superiority over any other form of yoga or meditation.  S.N. Goenka, the teacher of Vipassana in its current form, says so himself. If this particular method works for you, the proof will be manifested large in your life - then continue and go deep.  If not, don’t.  Who can argue with that?  It’s why I continue to practice yoga, in fact. 

We will all choose our methods and honour them. Perhaps we do not all need to learn the exact methods of Vipassana… but I do believe we need to protect our containers, always.

Let’s practice.

Useful Links:

Vipassana UK website: https://www.dhamma.org/en/about/vipassana

BBC Sounds: Vipassana - 240 hours of silence