38. What I Learned From My Vipassana

hi I'm Amanda and welcome to self on this podcast I share ideas experiences and to have conversations to explore the self by developing our own self-awareness we can better show up for ourselves and those around us and hopefully all live happier and healthier lives on today's episode I'm going to be sharing a bit about my experience during my vipassana and some of the lessons that I learned thank you the Persona means to see things as they really are it's one of India's most ancient meditation techniques and was rediscovered by gothama Buddha approximately 2005 years ago it was taught by him as a universal Remedy or an art of living now vapassana is taught all around the world and there are centers that offer the opportunity to learn for free it's all on donation basis now I first heard of vipassana in 2017 when I was in Myanmar and one of my travel Buddies what went to go and learn the technique so often what you'll hear is people saying I'm going to go and do a vipassana now to learn this technique you have to set aside 11 days and you go to the centers typically and you agree to some precepts and you pretty much just go into hiding for the entire time in order to learn the meditation technique properly so she told me about this and what she said to me was you know I'm going to go and learn this meditation I can't speak for 10 days and um you know I think she said yeah got no access to devices no writing none of this and I just thought that's insane I will never do that there's no chance I would ever sign up for something like this and not speak to anyone not process anything that's coming out no exercise just being there meditating all day for 10 days straight and funnily enough a few years ago I was in Bulgaria during covert and I don't remember what it was exactly but I sat there and this thought just came to my mind that it was time for me to do a vipassana which is so strange I think at that point perhaps I'd heard of a couple of people who had done it and I think during my yoga teacher training one of the girls that was in my course also was going to do one and I remember saying the exact same thing oh yeah I've heard of that thing before and I would never do it so I'm sitting there in Bulgaria and I have this thought and I look up vapassana centers in Bali because that's where I was headed next and there was a 10-day course available so if you're new to vipassana the first time you do a course it has to be the full 10 Day seating and there was one available in July of 2021. it was just the most bizarre I guess um coincidence or you know I think some might look at that as it was a sign I think for me I just saw it as it was I think I save a person is something that you'll know when it's the right time for you to do it and that's what I believe and at that moment for whatever reason I went yep I'm signing up for this vipassana and so I did and a lot of people don't tell you too much about it and I'm quite conscious of that because I don't want to shape anyone else's personal experience I think it's important for people if you feel like it's the right thing for you to go and do that you do it kind of without any expectations um but yeah I went into it just knowing obviously that I wasn't going to be talking for 10 days I wasn't going to be writing no yoga no exercise none of this and you know they give you a lot of information beforehand so that you know what you're getting yourself into um and I had actually flown from Bali to the island of java in order to do the vapassana because the Bali Center had closed and I think in part the reason I was able to to stay at least for the first few days was because I had already booked a return flight and I was like well what am I going to do in Jakarta I'm not gonna just go there and hang out and do nothing and spend money so I go in to the center and on the first evening we share a meal and at that point that's when your Noble silence begins so the noble silence is no talking no eye contact no interacting with anyone else who's there essentially it's really meant to feel like you are there on your own but obviously logistically you're not and you can't be so the lack of contact interaction and all of that is for that that feeling of being secluded and being isolated on your own and when we started Noble silence that first evening and I remember um during the talk feeling very apprehensive and thinking what on Earth have I signed myself up like what have I signed myself up for and we start the next morning and the days are long you know I think we wake up at 4 30 go to sleep at nine and it's about 10 or 11 hours of meditation every single day and at first one of the things that I noticed was how loud my mind was so you know getting up early sure that was a bit challenging but getting up early to go and sit down and meditate for a couple hours before eating before or anything yeah super challenging so I start noticing my mind how busy it is how I can hardly even keep myself focused In This Moment how I am anywhere other than where I actually am and vapassana is a way of self-transformation through self-observation so this is the part of all of it a part of not speaking a part of not having any access to the outside world of not writing of processing any of that is that you simply observe yourself and what's going on so that was the first lesson the first thing I realized was I have an extreme monkey mind and I think in fact we all do but it's just we are constantly taking in digesting so much it's like eating all the time without actually giving your body any time to digest to rest to sit with it and allow some of that stuff to and the impurities I guess to be washed out of your body so I realize that on the first day on the second day I start noticing other stuff coming out from my mind and what I realize is how impure the mind is I guess different Cravings different things that I want different things that I don't want my mind is Non-Stop and just going yeah going going in circles and like focused on things in the past focused on things in the future and again what I realize is that is where my mind is floating between and that's in reality when we're not present that is where our minds floating between we're always in either in the past or in the Pres or in the future if we're not there in the present moment so this kind of goes on for the few days I think on the third day I wanted to leave and as I said I had these flights books I was really trying to keep myself there but my mind was exhausted by that point and wanted to quit I was so tired because it was just all this stuff that was now coming up and surfacing that I hadn't given myself time um and space to really process and to allow these things to surface one of the greatest things that I came out from vipassana with was just not being on my phone it was such a wonderful thing to not have all of this input and constant noise in my head and just be able to enjoy silence true silence so through the days this kind of builds and the technique of meditation is around the observation of the sensations in your body you learn to understand their nature and ultimately the aim is to develop Equanimity it's learning not to react to the sensations That You observe not to judge them not to label them simply observing the observation in itself is the tool and then the result is being is developing that Equanimity which is a balance it's not being rocked by anything that's positive anything that feels good or by anything negative and one of the lessons that you're reminded of is not having a craving for Pleasant Sensations and no aversions to the unpleasant and applied in life it's the same thing it's not just constantly being in this state of desire and craving all the things that we want naturally which we you know we want those things and that's a very normal thing or having an aversion to the things that are unpleasant so through these 10 days I am learning how to observe without judgment and what I come to realize one of the greatest lessons is that nothing is permanent impermanence for me was the greatest lesson out of vapassana it's realizing and acknowledging that as I observed all these Sensations in my body that they eventually go away you know in one of the meditation you know in a few of the meditation seedings through the day it's we do something called like a strong determination setting so you don't move at all for the entire hour and if you are someone who is like fidgety like me that is a huge Challenge and if you start to notice when you're focusing on observing the sensations in your body you start noticing things like oh I'm itchy here and um a little bit uncomfortable here and you're paying attention to all of this but not reacting to any of it and then that's the lesson of impermanence is recognizing in fact that everything goes away even if something is really sore and painful that pain eventually fades so I start learning about this idea of impermanence and start to recognize in myself that no sensation is permanent no emotion no situation no relationship like in fact nothing even obviously me myself my body my state Everything Changes constantly and in fact the only constant in life is the fact that everything is changing and that nothing is permanent nothing stays the same our cells are constantly changing our body our mind our emotions and for someone who has struggled with a lot of overthinking anxiety you know control type of stuff because of my different traumas and situations that I've been in there was this incredible relief that came from came to me from recognition and acceptance of the impermanence of everything I have learned to be able to accept and let go of so much which I don't think I would have been able to before my vapassana you know I am someone who in the past really likes to cling onto and hold on to things and particularly hold on to people I think in part that comes from being someone who's more anxiously attached who is afraid of Abandonment and also just someone like I love relationships like I love people and I have quite a hard time letting go of people and accepting that there are seasons to relationships and friendships sometimes and not everyone is there to be in our life forever and that's okay um so coming out of my first ever pastner it really helped me to accept all these things this kind of Truth in the world that nothing is permanent and it means that really if we if we know and for me it's like knowing that Everything Changes Everything can change that helped me to just let go to let go of that need for controlling everything um I left that vapassana I think with kind of these lessons that sit there in your mind so I left there with a few things and then over the next few months after that I think that's when I really saw the benefits and the lessons play out in my life and a year later I was out of the relationship that I was in which was so unhealthy and toxic and I do believe that vapassana was something that helped me step out of that because I wanted so much for it to work and I was holding on to it you know with like squeezing a flower in your hand when you're just crushing it because you want to hang on to it instead of just letting it go and letting it be um and I was able to walk away from it there was a lot of I think trauma bonding in that relationship that made it hard for me to leave but coming back to my lessons from vipassana coming back to to recognizing you know how much noise goes on in my head how much I Am Naturally an overthinker and seeing myself as I am I was then able to step out and recognize what's healthy and what's not healthy for me and then being able to let go and see that hey um it's okay that this relationship didn't work and to be able to let go of it so I do that and a few months later so now it's been just over a year and I sign up for my second vipassana and this time it's a short course it's only I think three or four days and you go and for me it wasn't really enough time to really get back into the discipline of vipassana but I still gained a lot from that experience again last year what started coming up for me was different memories um I had a couple of dreams and then those dreams triggered some memories that I had suppressed and stuff that I hadn't dealt with and realized within myself so I was able to I guess like have them come to the surface and start to look through and work through a lot of these things that came up but yeah the experience of a Persona has been something incredibly valuable to me and the major lessons from have I guess like have can be broken down into a few things because one is through the precepts that you take so through Noble silence through only eating a couple of meals earlier in the day through not moving and just being there being present totally disconnected from the world that taught me so much about myself then the actual vapassana technique in itself the observation of the sensations in your body being transformed through that and understanding the impermanence of the sensations the impermanence of everything that I exist with and just the impermanence of life in itself really has allowed me to to not be I suppose like taken on this roller coaster ride these are waves of extreme highs and lows and everything and simply being able to recognize that life simply is it just is that it is full of pleasant and unpleasant things that neither is better nor worse for us it simply is being able to accept that no emotion is preferable over another no situation you know I guess like I don't want to say no situation is preferable over another because we don't want to be endangering ourselves there's definitely wisdom in recognizing when something's not actually good for you and something's unhealthy for you but it allowed me to better regulate my own emotions to be able to recognize observe them as they come up and then to not be reactive to them you know I've done a past episode on non-reactivity before so that's kind of in part touching on that but then being able to bring that into the world and seeing that when people come to me with their stuff and want to project that onto me being able to say you know this just isn't my thing I again I don't have to be rocked by that I don't have to be taken on any kind of wave with it with other people but just being able to step back and go even if this experience right now isn't all that enjoyable I know that it's not going to last forever and I know that it's impermanent and that is really the core of my vipassana experience and I would love to share more about impermanence perhaps later down the track I think it's something that I'm still learning about now and really digesting and accepting in all parts of my life because as much as I can understand it intellectually and I think it does apply to to many spaces in my life there's there are definitely still areas where I don't truly know really and I you know when I say the word no again I mean Beyond intellectually I mean no in your body at a biological level really know that everything is impermanent So yeah thank you for listening to today's episode and tuning in you can listen to more episodes anywhere you get your podcast or you can also watch these episodes on YouTube you can follow me along on Instagram at self double double underscore podcast and at Amanda lotran that's Amanda l-a-t-r-a-n I release episodes every Thursday and I will see you next week bye foreign [Music]

Channel: SELF with Amanda

Views: 9,165

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Id: xyZ09NV5HJk

Length: 22min 5sec (1325 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 19 2023