Journal Excerpt: Vipassana Retreat
This is a rare, mostly un-redacted journal excerpt. I don’t know if I’ll add any more, but I think there’s some interesting stuff here so I thought I’d include it. This excerpt refers to a Dhamma vipassana retreat I undertook briefly before. I thoroughly recommend it to anyone curious.
Somerset
How I’m feeling post-retreat
It’s about 48 hours since I left the Dhamma retreat in Stowmarket and I’m quite confident it’s the most important thing I’ve ever done for myself. Not only do I feel good, but I feel aware of how bad I felt before and both how and why I feel so much better now. At a high level, I now don’t need content to sleep, don’t watch youtube, don’t drink coffee, don’t use snus, don’t ruminate anxiously, and don’t find myself building anxiety toward tasks or conversations which promise challenge or negative emotion. I’ve not cleared my whatsapp yet but I’m chipping away at it, and I feel confident about my life in general.
What I need to be cautious of is the continued practice. Goenka says an hour in the morning and an hour at night, which feels ambitious. However, I’ve not done more than 30 minutes a day since the retreat and I am feeling some of the benefits dwindle a bit. Not in any big way but I don’t feel quite as high as I did on the tail end of the retreat. (Something to consider here: perhaps I was particularly high because of the contrast between confinement and silence to then talking to people and seeing the outside world…)
(Continued 27th)
Okay so it’s a couple of days later. I did 30 minutes yesterday in the morning when I woke up at 4am (body clock still in retreat mode), and I did an hour today. Results are mostly encouraging. Important context: I have a chest infection, so that’s tempering things a bit I think. I woke up this morning with very low energy and had slept quite badly according to the [Oura] ring. Low blood oxygen and some points because I couldn’t tape thanks to coughing and a blocked nose. BUT, throughout the day my energy has increased. Had a strong tea which probably helped a lot - must be less caffeine than I’m used to but still probably went a bit hard given that I don’t have an active addiction any more. Meditation today was difficult in some ways and easy in others. Legs went 100% numb but I was fine with it, so equanimity clearly coming on. Sensitivity inconsistent - took a long time to feel tingles and suspect this is more a function of time on cushion. All of this makes me want to outline what my theory is about how all this works so I can decide whether lower sensitivity matters for my priorities.
Experience of retreat and Theory of Vipassana
Goenkaji said:
- Retreat is deep brain surgery
- Principle aim is to develop equanimity through not reacting to stimulus
- “solidified intensified gross physical sensations” (i.e. pain) will help develop against aversion
- “subtle agreeable physical sensations” (i.e. nice tingles etc.) will help against craving
- The subconscious mind works on physical sensations primarily, hence this focus on sensation
- One mustn’t get tied up in “playing games with sensations”.
Considering the benefits I feel from the retreat:
- Felt at the time and continue to feel
- Calm
- Lack of anxiety / trepidation in general
- Decreased discomfort in general (both physically and when sat doing tasks for example)
- High energy
- Impulse control (with the exception of some food and exercise decisions, but this is hard to call thanks to the illness)
- Long temper (hard to measure during but felt it since and that’s what matters)
- Genuine enjoyment for a lot of the time during meditation if I’m remembering my equanimity.
- Notably increased focus whilst in-task
- Decreased need for outside stimulation (reddit, news, YT)
- Ability to sleep without content
- Felt at the time but am feeling less now
- Notably increased focus during meditation sit
- Ability to meditate whilst lying down (hard to gauge this one as a lot of the time I fall asleep which is just as good, but it feels like there are times where I’m just daydreaming for a long time despite wanting to be meditating before sleeping).
- Almost perfect impulse control - I’ve definitely felt food / hunger pushing up against my impulse control since the retreat, whereas coffee / nicotine have been almost a non-issue.
Obviously I think the ideal is just to meditate for 2hrs per day to retain as much of this as possible, but assuming that’s not possible, I need to strike a balance between equanimity, focus, and sensitivity as I think they are all independent sliders I can focus more or less attention and weighting towards.
Maximising for equanimity: this is the easiest as I can just sit in a position which is definitely going to get uncomfortable quickly and then just cycle through pain and discomfort sensations. I’ll stay awake easily enough and I will just be hitting the anti-aversion and resilience button throughout. This is barely Vipassana though - I’d almost call this pain-meditation.
Maximising for focus: this would be probably just focusing on Anapana consistently (this is what Goenkaji says). It’s certainly more noticeable when my attention wanders and I have to redirect it much more in this kind of sit. It’s also less fun, but as long as I’m finding myself feeling annoyed or uncomfortable, I can kick into equanimity training / hybrid pain meditation.
Maximising for sensitivity: this is what trad Vipassana is good for (as well as the other two). Ultimately I think I care about it less than the other two, but it would help with the enthusiasm for the practice and possibly make the other two work with more depth.
Given the above I think the best approach would be starting with 5 minutes Anapana to diagnose where focus and wakefulness are and then moving to Vipassana if all is good, or jumping into focus or pain-meditation if that seems best.
Generally, I think the pain meditation and focus are probably the biggest levers for improving my mental health, so it’s good to make sure they definitely get a good look-in.