Before I start, I want to make something clear. I’m not going to explain the Vipassana technique in this blog. I’m not going to describe the structure in detail or tell you how it works. There is plenty information about that in other places, and if you ever feel called to do it, I believe it’s better to go in as open as possible.
This blog is about my experience. About what it felt like to sit there. To fall before I even began. To get sick in the middle of it. To question the theory. To stay anyway. To notice what surfaced when there was nothing left to distract me.
If you are considering doing Vipassana for the first time, I think it’s best not to read too much. Let it meet you the way it’s supposed to meet you. Without expectations. Without other people’s interpretations shaping it beforehand.
Now I’ll share how I experienced it.
Not another silence retreat
Who voluntarily signs up to sit on a pillow for more than 100 hours in ten days of silence? Apparently, a lot of people do. So that made me curious.
Vipassana wasn’t even on my radar. I wasn’t researching it or planning it. The idea only appeared after a conversation with an ancient tree in Bali. I was sitting with it, asking what I could do to level up spiritually. The answer came clearly: go to India.
India was never on my list. If I’m honest, I even had resistance towards it. It felt chaotic, overwhelming, intense. But once the idea landed, it stayed. And when I started talking about silence retreats in India, Vipassana kept coming up in conversations with different people. That felt like synchronicity.
Ten days of silence. No phone. No writing. No reading. No eye contact. Meditation from 4:30 in the morning until 9 at night.
It sounded very challenging, but it also felt right. There was still too much noise in my life. Too much of my old identity. Too many limiting beliefs and thoughts filling every empty space. I wanted to know what would remain if all of that fell away.
So I applied, got accepted and booked my ticket.
Arrival at Dhamma Bodhi
The moment I arrived at Dhamma Bodhi, I felt a kind of peace that is hard to describe. The campus is simple and quite primitive. There wasn’t much explanation when everyone arrived. You had to figure things out yourself: where to go, where to sleep, how to do laundry. It already felt like part of the process.
I had a roommate, and before noble silence began, we made a few practical agreements. Who would shower when, how to move around the room in the early mornings without disturbing each other. It felt strange to arrange these small details with someone I had just met, knowing we wouldn’t speak again for ten days.
The room itself was basic. An uncomfortable bed, bare walls, and only one hour of warm water per day. The simplicity was confronting but also clarifying. There was nothing extra, nothing to hide in.
When I handed in my phone, I expected resistance. Instead, I felt relief. A surprising lightness. As if something had been taken off my shoulders. I didn’t know yet that I wouldn’t miss it at all.
The first meditation in the dhamma hall felt like stepping into something irreversible. I remember sitting down and thinking, “let’s go.” And almost immediately after that: ten hours of meditation per day is a lot.
I looked around and saw the same mixture of determination and fear in other faces. Then noble silence began. The outside world became distant very quickly.
Day 1: The fall
At 4:25 in the morning, on my way to the meditation hall in the dark, I fell down the stairs.
I landed fully on my back and my butt, exactly the parts of my body I would need most in the coming days. The pain was sharp and shocking. For a few minutes I couldn’t move, and I lay there crying, with one thought looping through my mind: not now, please not now.
My biggest unspoken fear before coming here had been that I wouldn’t be able to finish because of illness. And here I was, before even properly starting, already on the ground.
Eventually I stood up and slowly walked to the hall. I sat down, still crying, feeling the pain spread through my lower back. Somewhere during that first meditation, between discomfort and adrenaline, I felt a wave of gratitude. I was still there. I could still sit. I could still begin.
That evening we watched the first discourse by S.N. Goenka. I secretly started calling it “movie night.” It helped to bring some lightness into the intensity of the days. His explanations and occasional humor became something I genuinely looked forward to.
The first days: Pain and confrontation
The back pain was constant. I couldn’t distinguish whether it came from the fall or from sitting cross-legged for hours. It didn’t really matter, it was pain and I could not distract myself from it.
On the second day, two people screamed during meditation and were guided outside by the staff. I never saw them again. It was confronting to witness. When there is nothing left to distract you, you meet yourself directly and you have to be ready for that.
The campus was peaceful, but the cold was something else. I was angry about it. I don’t like the cold. Why was I doing Vipassana in a cold climate? I hadn’t imagined this. The discomfort felt unnecessary, almost unfair. I noticed frustration towards the universe for placing me here and towards myself for choosing it.
At some point on day three, when the pain became slightly more manageable, I internally asked the tree again why I had been sent here. The answer that came was simple: you had to leave Canggu. Leave your routines. Leave the comfort.
Canggu had been a beautiful transition space for me, a bridge between my old and new life. But it also kept me in a certain rhythm: familiar cafés, familiar faces, a certain lifestyle. Being here, in this primitive setting close to Bodh Gaya, stripped that away. The discomfort was part of it.
Day 4 and 5: Sickness
On day four, I got sick. It started with a blocked nose and pressure in my head. Then came the coughing. During one meditation session I couldn’t breathe properly and panic rose in my body. A deep-rooted thought surfaced: there’s always something with you. And I broke down.
Crying silently in a hall full of silent people is a strange experience. You feel exposed and invisible at the same time. The woman behind me gently passed me a small package of handkerchiefs. No eye contact. No words. It wasn’t allowed. But it felt deeply supportive.
I spoke to the teacher. The only people we were allowed to speak to were the teacher and the managing staff. He told me to take it moment by moment.
By day five, the fever had started and the cough was heavy. I was disturbing the silence, which felt ironic in a place devoted to it. I could clearly observe my aversion towards being sick and my craving to feel better. At the same time, I felt frustrated. Frustrated with my body. Frustrated with the universe. Why now?
The teacher called it “a small inconvenience.” From his perspective, it probably was. From mine, it felt big.
That night I considered leaving. It felt like failing, but staying felt overwhelming too. I decided not to make a dramatic decision and to see how I would feel the next morning.
Staying
I stayed because something in me didn’t want to leave unfinished. Illness happens in real life too. If I only practice when circumstances are ideal, what am I really learning?
I questioned the theory behind the course and how it translates into daily life. When I asked the teacher broader questions, he answered short and clear: we can only ask questions about the content of this course. Nothing beyond that.
The days started to blur into each other. Still coughing. Still feeling cold. Walking meditation in the garden. Resting in my small room. Observing sensations. Observing resistance. Observing the desire for it to end.
My neighbor was often in her room as well. Somehow that felt comforting. We were going through something intense together without ever speaking.
I saw one woman leave close to the end and felt sadness for her. After so many days, you are almost there. But I also understood. A few days in there can feel like weeks.
Day 10 and 11: The Return of Sound
Day 10 arrived, and with it a quiet realization: I had made it all the way through. Ten days earlier I had been lying on those stairs at 4:25 in the morning, crying from pain and fear that I might not even be able to begin. And now I was here, at the point where the silence would end. It felt significant, deeply relieving.
That morning we still meditated, and there would be more sessions throughout the day and even the next morning. The focus that had been so sharp and inward suddenly felt softer, more dispersed. You could sense a subtle shift in energy in the hall. Minds were already aware that soon we would be leaving.
When noble silence officially ended, the first sounds felt almost sacred. Hesitant laughter, careful greetings. Soft voices that had been stored away for ten days. These women, who had been silent presences beside me in the meditation hall, standing in line for food, walking slowly through the garden, suddenly had voices, personalities, accents, stories. I heard about their fears, their breakthroughs, their reasons for coming. It felt like meeting them twice: once in silence, once in words.
And almost immediately I understood something very clearly: this is why the course is in silence. Without the social layer, without the small talk, without the unconscious adjusting to each other, you are forced to meet yourself first. The silence removes the distraction of connection so you can see what is underneath.
After spending so many days and hours in the same building, moving through the same moments of stillness, everyone slowly began to go their own way again. Some were glowing. Some were quiet. Some, like me, were mixed.
Men and women were allowed to speak to each other again too. When noble silence ended, the campus felt lighter, more social, almost playful. I invited a few people to come to the same guesthouse where I was staying, and they came. We extended the bubble for a few more days, talking for hours about what we had experienced, about life before, about what might come next. There was something very pure about those conversations. No masks. No introductions needed beyond what we had just lived through together.
I felt an overwhelming sense of love for life in those days. Love for the rawness of being human. For the fact that we get to meet each other in these unexpected ways. For the courage it takes to sit with yourself. Completing the course did not magically heal my body or remove my critical thoughts about the technique, but it did show me that I am capable of observing. The sickness became part of the experience and something I learned to sit with.
My cough was still persistent, and I felt cold almost all the time. My body was clearly still fighting something. After a few days, I found myself looking forward to Thailand. To warmth. To sunlight on my skin. To letting my system fully recover. It felt like the next chapter waiting gently in the background.
And somewhere in all of this, I realized something else: India got me. It challenged me, confronted me, stripped me, and held me all at once. It was enough for now, but I know I will come back.
Reflections
Vipassana focuses on observing sensations without craving or aversion, with liberation as the ultimate goal. I respect that deeply.
At the same time, I found myself questioning how this translates into daily life. Are we not also here to experience emotions fully? Is craving always something to eliminate? What about consciously choosing desire, love, attachment?
I don’t have final answers. What I do know is that ten days without distraction shows you your patterns clearly. My guilt. The feeling of needing to meet others’ expectations. The story of being a burden and not enough. Those patterns became visible as sensations in my body rather than absolute truths. And when you see them like that, something shifts.
My Shedding
When I look back at those ten days, I don’t experience them as a dramatic transformation but as a quiet shedding. Not of my personality, not of my doubts, but of certain layers that had been wrapped around me for a long time.
One of the most practical realizations was how little I actually need. Two simple meals a day and some fruit in the evening were enough. Before arriving, I had been dealing with stress-induced food cravings, moments where food became comfort or distraction. Within the structure of the course, that pattern softened. Not because I forced myself to control it, but because there was no space to escape. I began to see that many of my cravings were not about hunger, but about unrest. That is something I want to carry into daily life with more awareness and by observing the sensations when food cravings start.
Living on a very primitive campus also confronted me in unexpected ways. The uncomfortable bed, the single hour of warm water, the cold mornings, and the simple surroundings made me reflect on the environment I want to create for myself. Canggu was a beautiful chapter and a necessary transition between my old life and the one I am slowly shaping now. It gave me space to land. But I feel ready for something quieter and closer to nature. More green around me. More silence woven into daily life. Cleaner air. A place where nature is not something you escape to for the weekend, but something you are part of every day.
Handing in my phone on the first day felt like a relief, and what surprised me most was that I didn’t miss it. I didn’t miss the constant input, the background noise, the subtle pressure to respond or consume. That showed me how much of the mental noise in my life is optional. I don’t need constant stimulation to feel connected or alive. There is a simplicity available that I want to protect more consciously.
On a deeper level, the story I have carried for years about being a burden or not meeting expectations felt less solid after these days. In the silence, I could observe how quickly guilt arises in my body, how familiar it feels, how automatic. But I could also see that it is a pattern, not a truth. It’s something I learned and it can slowly be unlearned. I don’t have to build my identity around adaptation anymore. I can have connections without losing myself in the process.
Perhaps the most grounding shift is that I feel closer to what I genuinely want. Writing. Sharing my stories. Trusting that they matter and that others might recognize parts of themselves in them. Vipassana did not give me a new identity. It stripped away some of the noise that was covering what was already there.
At the same time, I also realized something that I believe deserves more attention: integration takes time. After arriving in Thailand, my body shut down again and I became sick once more. At first, I felt frustrated, as if I had done something wrong. But slowly I understood that ten days of deep internal work, especially while being physically unwell, had been a lot for my system. For someone sensitive like me, silence does not simply end when the course ends. For a sensitive system like mine, the body and mind need space to settle, to land fully after the intensity.
During the course, there is little emphasis on this transition back into the world. You finish, you speak again, and then you leave. But if you are sensitive, if you tend to process deeply, giving yourself time afterward is not a luxury; it is necessary. Thailand became not only a place for warmth and recovery, but for integration. For letting everything settle.
Meditation will remain part of my life, though not in a rigid or dogmatic way. I am grateful that I learned the Vipassana technique and that I experienced what it means to observe sensations so precisely. At the same time, I also feel that my path is not about following one structure exactly as it is taught. I will continue meditating in a way that feels aligned with my nervous system, my sensitivity, and my rhythm.
Closer to myself
Vipassana was uncomfortable. It was cold. It was painful. I was sick for most of it and at times deeply afraid I wouldn’t make it through. And still, I stayed. Not out of discipline alone, but because something in me was ready to observe and just sit with whatever was coming.
It was not a gentle experience. It shook things loose. It confronted me with patterns I could no longer deny. It asked more of my body and nervous system than I expected. And even after the course ended, the process continued. Thailand was not just recovery; it was integration. My system needed time to absorb what had moved.
Looking back now, I can say this: it was enormous. Not because it made me someone new overnight, but because it brought me closer to who I have always been beneath the noise, the guilt, the adaptation, and the fear. I feel more rooted in myself. Clearer. Less fragmented.
That is what shedding meant for me. Not disappearing. Not becoming someone new. But stepping back into myself with more clarity, more strength, and more trust than before.