OH! Magazine - Australian Version January 2014 (Australian Version) | Page 8

( OH WOW! )

The place has a slight cultish feel,
with the teachers dressed in meditationstyle clothes. We all watch the big screen
and Goenka feels like the leader. Even
though Vipassana has roots in Buddhism
there are no religious preachings or
obvious affiliations.
The first three days are spent
practicing basic breath meditation.
Whenever a thought comes to mind we
are instructed to bring our attention back
to the breath. Seems easy, right? I’d been
practicing a similar method for a year or
more, and so by day three I was floating
around like I was on opium.
The beautiful bush location means
that when it’s free time, as well as during
certain times of meditation, you can
wander around the gardens and sit in the
sun, which is very relaxing (although
bumping into other meditators on a bush
track with no talking or eye contact can
feel a bit weird at times). Being left alone
with only your thoughts and no outlet,
you start to come up with names for
people: I had ‘big bird’ (a 7 foot tall guy),
‘thongs’ for the man who had really loud
thongs, and ‘cool monk guy’ (he was
wearing monk-style clothing attire and
could sit for hours on end with ease).
The next seven days were spent
practicing Vipassana, which is a body
scanning
technique
done
while
meditating. It is designed to take you a
whole lot deeper into your meditation,
while also teaching you how to avoid
judging good or bad feelings that arise
within the body and mind. It’s easier said
than done, with minutes feeling like
hours, and hours sometimes feeling like

8

ISSUE 6 ( OH! MAGAZINE )

seconds during this process. Just sitting
still can be excruciating. We are given
mats, blankets and stools to use, but
none of this really helps when you’re
doing it for so long, day in and day out.
I start to notice participants are
starting to disappear from the group and
not come back. I wonder if I, too, could
just take off and be home in front of the
telly by nightfall? But my keys and phone
are locked up. I find myself often
fantasising about finding the box full of
car keys and phones, and doing a runner,
but never muster up the courage to
actually ask for my keys.
The staff are amazing in deterring
would-be escapees from jumping the
fence and running all the way home.
They inform us that to do so would be to
like leaving a medical operation while on
the table; they tell us that Vipassana is
an operation of the mind, which explains
why things can get so full on!
Each day I eagerly look forward to
breakfast and lunch. All meals are
delicious vegetarian wholefood feasts, but
you can forget being excited about dinner,
because you only get a piece of fruit and a
cup of tea. The dining room has an eerie
silence but, looking around, I can tell I’m
not the only one with issues arising.
It’s amazing what comes up when you
bring your thinking mind to a halt for a
few days. You realise how obsessed we
are with stimulation, keeping ourselves
busy, chatting to ourselves, and replaying
the same crazy thoughts we’ve been
carrying our whole lives.
To reach the subconcious mind is
quite an empowering and scary place to

be.
Goenka
calls
it
‘solidified
sensations’ or ‘sankaras’ and he believes
we carry these sankaras for more than
one lifetime.
By day six I have what feels like a golf
ball stuck in my forehead and a bucket
of concrete in my stomach. The feelings
are so powerful and nothing like I’ve
ever felt before.
When I feel like I’m on the brink of
flipping out, I find myself in the teacher’s
pagoda being taught techniques to help
expel these sankaras. And just as they
told me, after practicing these techniques
the feelings start to disperse and continue
to do so over the next few days.
On the last day you are allowed to speak
to the other participants, and it feels
amazing to do so. You spend the whole day
sharing your experience with people you
feel like you’ve known your whole life, but
whom you’ve actually never spoken to or
made eye contact with until today.
After these discussions, I discovered
that most people had a life-changing
spiritual experience, and some even
feeling terrified after having been alone
with their own mind.
Most people agreed that the staff
and the Vipassana techniques were
effective in helping them get through
the worst of it. 
I’m not sure exactly what happened,
but I went through some pretty crazy
stuff during my Vipassana experience. )5