I just came out from my second silent meditation retreat ever – also Vipassana but taught by a quite different style from my last retreat in Thailand in 2022.

I didn’t learn as many lessons, but I deepened in my ones from last time. I also realized I overall feel more grounded and peaceful, which hopefully means I am further in my healing journey.

(In fact, people kept commenting on my “grounded, calm, wise energy” at a recent business conference I attended. What a change from the high strung, neurotic, high-achieving, intense self I had been for so many years!)

It wasn’t as hard to keep to the rules and I managed to not use my phone, read or write at all, unlike last time.

I was surprised I didn’t even miss talking to others (I felt the evening lectures from Goenka and Q&As with our teacher were more than enough verbal stimulation). Guess that confirms I’m a supreme Introvert XD

This retreat was definitely easier for me than probably for most people. I found myself happily entertaining myself staring off into the Colorado woods, enjoying my walks, observing the plentiful plants and animals, basking in the sun and air on my skin, breathing in the delightful smells and sounds.

For context, this meditation style was taught by S.N. Goenka, a spiritual teacher of Buddha’s teachings. However, though there are some concepts and words from Buddhism, it’s secular and science-based, trying to get us to FEEL the atoms of our bodies vibrating and realizing we are mostly empty space.

It sounds impossible, but many people were able to experience such bodily sensations! In my last couple of days, I think I was able to too. My face felt like it disappeared. And I could feel movement in my body though I was sitting perfectly still as I scanned it from head to toe. I felt the aliveness of every cell and the energies they carried.

This is the “reality of nature” that was talked about in the lectures. But simply hearing or reading about it is different from experiencing it!

For a long time I had had that knowledge and known about it only in theory. Experiencing it brought a new level of awareness, peace, and liberation.

It helped solidify the message and directly tell my body, where I had stored trauma, that we are never alone; our particles are always interacting with all the other particles around us. We are always supported. We don’t need to take life so seriously. Is there even an “I” in this giant mass of particles? Or only the illusion of “I”?

I still grapple most with the “Non-self” or “No soul” concept in Buddhism (Annata) that there is no separate “I” or “you.” The other ones (Annica – Impermanence and Dukkha – Suffering) are way more easily acceptable.

Even if it’s just an illusion we’re living in of separate beings, it still seems to matter. If the world’s suffering is an illusion, it still matters to fight against to try to alleviate the illusion. But not as much. Knowing we’re in a game doesn’t mean we get to not play it. We still have to play it, but we can do so with more ease, perhaps knowing that the stakes aren’t as high as we had thought.

Another aspect of the meditation technique was to develop equanimity, or balanced neutrality, to all the sensations in our bodies, no matter how pleasant or unpleasant. Becoming attached to pleasant ones create clinging and craving, and violently reacting to unpleasant ones create aversion and avoidance.

This was how many people who came to these retreats, even for just the 10 days, were able to miraculously break substance addictions! Because they had been using them to chase the sensations in their bodies, at the end of the day. If we could learn to maintain balance and peace at the level of the root cause, we wouldn’t be chasing or evading as much.

I had struggled with food and love addictions my whole life, and think I had gotten to a fairly good place with both. They’re tough ones especially because you can’t quit them entirely cold turkey, or forever, unlike drugs or alcohol. We have to eat. We have to love. If we want to survive or have a chance at a happy, healthy life.

Each time we do crave or evade, we are repeating a “sankara” or cause & effect pattern, and more deeply ingraining the habit pattern. The deeper the groove, the harder it is to change it, and the more automatically we react in that way.

In contrast, if we learn to break that pattern by staying neutral and not reacting, we are able to create a pause and space so we can consciously respond or choose differently. And old patterns will also rise up and dissipate, supposedly. I was skeptical about this and didn’t fully understand, but old stuff DID come up in my dreams, which surprised me.

The best analogies they used for this is twisting a rope; if you stop twisting it, it will naturally have to unwind on its own. Or if you pour water into a cup, if you stop pouring, some water will naturally evaporate.

Some of my other lessons in no particular order (some expanding on my lessons from my 2022 retreat in Thailand):

1) I still think a lot about short term future plans, not so much from a place of wanting control, but eager anticipation to experience them, however they may turn out.

This is a huge contrast to my last retreat, where I was still chasing the illusion of control, thinking that if I planned and rehearsed future events, I could significantly impact them.

Yes mental rehearsing can make a difference, but many things are out of our control. I feel more at peace making plans but loosely held, being flexible for them to change or for unexpected factors to come up.

2) Though I usually don’t dwell on the past, I did think about it this time since I had a recent almost-relationship not work out. The time to myself helped me process and solidify that it was the right decision.

It doesn’t do any good to torture oneself with what-ifs or regrets about what we could’ve done differently since we can’t change the past. But I try to take the lessons I learned to apply to future similar situations.

Other very old past stuff came up though, and I had 2 dreams/nightmares about my first career as a women’s health doctor doing surgeries. One was filled with feelings of deep shame and regret, and the other a few days later, was one of fond nostalgia and longing to remember how to tie surgical knots.

The ambivalence was not lost on me. Since leaving medicine in 2018, it had always felt like a tug of war between trying to keep the parts I enjoyed but minimize the parts that caused me harm.

I was really surprised by the dreams. This meditation practice did say that old “sankaras” and karmas would naturally rise to the surface, when we stop creating new ones with feelings of craving or aversion in response to sensations.

But since distressing thoughts didn’t come up during the daytime meditations, I thought I had processed most of them or didn’t have major stuff to work through anymore. Ha! Our healing journey never ends. And that’s ok, we are deserving of love in every moment of our imperfections.

3) I’m more ok with just being. Time didn’t seem to crawl by without stimulation. I found myself easily and pleasantly entertaining myself, sometimes with cloud, nature, or people watching, but often times just tuning into the abundance of sensations around me through my 5 senses (and the 6th sense of thinking).

My past “doer” energy didn’t feel freak out that I’m wasting my time. It felt like time well spent, rejuvenating and reconnecting with myself. Sure there were some times I was antsy and wanted to work on my business and creative projects or write down the random cool ideas I had. But it was just surprisingly pleasant to savor the stillness.

4) I really loved how this retreat allowed you to chat with the other students about your experiences on the last day, unlike the Thailand one which didn’t even allow you to exchange contact information. I bonded with several “Vipassana sisters,” many of whom also experienced childhood traumas and were actively healing themselves and/or others in healing professions.

One of them even hosted a post-retreat reunion at her fairy-themed birthday party!

I loved hearing all their stories, lessons, and the common threads that connect us all. We had been doing and trying to figure out so much on our own, thinking we were alone, looking at other floating icebergs, not realizing that all along our bases/roots had been connected underneath the surface <3

That’s all for now. I’m sure more lessons will arise as I integrate, and as I repeat these retreats or mini-retreats, aiming for at least once a year.

What have your experiences with meditation or retreats been like? If you’re curious about it at all, I recommend you try it for yourself sometime! Courses are free/donations-based and all over the world. You just sign up at Dhamma.org

At the very least you’ll get some health benefits from meditation, if not any emotional, mental or spiritual insights!

You can leave early and they don’t strictly enforce all the 10 hours per day of meditation. You don’t have much 1:1 guidance, though, so I don’t think it’s the best choice for everyone. If you have any questions about it or my other experiences, feel free to reach out! Leave a comment or email me at DrTooni@mail.com