2025-09-26

My Experience Meditating for 10 Days Straight

A year ago to this day, I was waking up at 4am and spending over 10 hours focussing on the sensations of air passing over the little triangle of skin between my nose and mouth.

I’d done the same thing the previous two days too. And I still had seven more to go.

This was not in fact the pursuit of a crazy person (arguably) but a Vipassana - a 10 day residential course teaching the ancient Indian meditation technique of self-transformation through self-observation.

Suffice to say, it was one of the hardest but most worthwhile things I’ve done. Exactly a year on, I thought some reflection was due, and why I think more people (“meditators” or not) should absolutely consider it!

What The Heck Got Me There?

At the time, I’d been meditating consistently for about 3 years. Usually about 30 minutes each morning¹. Very occasionally I would stretch it to an hour as a personal challenge, but it was usually just me peeking through my eyelids at the clock every five minutes than being completely in the zone, levitating 2 inches off the ground.

Someone that I follow online had put the idea in my head a while back. And when it transpired that one of only two centres offering it in the UK was in the countryside outside Hereford of all places, an unassuming city about 40 minutes away from where I live that I’ve probably visited hundreds of times, I’d like to say it was a no-brainer to book one.

In fact, I was actually SO SCARED, and very nearly backed out. But curiosity got the better of me, and I’m so glad it did!

The Vipassana Schedule

This is what I’d signed up for:

• To abide by the five precepts:

  1. To abstain from killing any living being
  2. To abstain from stealing
  3. To abstain from all sexual activity
  4. To abstain from telling lies
  5. To abstain from all intoxicants

• To eat only at breakfast and lunch, with only tea and a piece of fruit for dinner²

• Complete segregation of men and women

• No physical contact, even eye-contact, between people

• No exercise beyond walking

• No distractions: no books, no means of writing, and phones locked away for the entire 10 days. Even the wall posters were covered up

• To observe the Noble Silence from the beginning to the morning of the last full day, speaking only with the teacher when necessary

And each day looked like this:

My Experience

I couldn’t have been more on edge driving to the centre. As I arrived and sat down to sign the paperwork, the enormity of what lay before me felt slightly surreal.

I locked up my phone. Goodbye world!

After that, I just wanted it to start. I didn’t know what to do with myself, and the babble of chatter felt overwhelming. I took a seat at the edge of the room, but only a moment later, a woman, maybe in her 30s with thick curly hair, took a seat next to me and introduced herself as Fahim. She was bubbly, smiled easily and I remember being struck by how her eyes gleamed with kindness. We struck up a conversation and connected immediately. I think I can recall she worked in customer service for insurance, and was originally from Iran and now living in Wales. The interaction was just what I needed to feel a bit more at ease. Thank you Fahim!

Soon after, we were joined by Philippa. She was a grandmother, I’d guess in her 60s, inspired to do a vipassana by her daughter, who was living in New Zealand and found the experience life-changing. She had a homely, comforting presence.

Unintentionally, from that moment on, we formed a bit of a trio. A somewhat unlikely one, given a fair proportion of the group were women around my own age, but I think there can be so much value in intergenerational friendships! Not that there would be any indication of it once the silence commenced, and we couldn’t even smile to each other, but we’d covered so much ground in ≈1 hour of speaking that we formed an unspoken bond, and one I would turn out to find so much solace in.

Day 1-3

Silence descends. It’s uncanny to walk towards the meditation hall, everyone animated and chatting and making friends, before moving quickly, in anticipation, to a hushed sense of quiet. And then, introduction completed, leave the hall with heads bowed, to the sounds of only scuffling footsteps.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that although the entire thing was incredibly difficult, the first three days bordered on torturous.

As I alluded to in the opening line, the practice for these three days was simple: sitting and observing the movement of the breath out of the nostrils and over the skin above the lip. It’s the practice of sharpening the mind: tuning into subtle sensations of the body, and away from identification with thought.

Too bad that the mind isn’t willing to let up that easily. As I sat there and tried to focus those first few days, I didn’t realise how noisy my brain was. It felt like my head was an antenna picking up different frequencies, flitting between radio stations reading out random, irrelevant, unhelpful thoughts and playing stupid songs³. Sandwiched between was a general narrative of what the hell have I got myself into and how the hell am I going to get to the end of this.

(This turned out a bit creepier than intended. The most unrealistic part is I don’t have that much of a tan)

As I said, the longest I’d meditated previously was about an hour. On those occasions, I’d get some pins and needles and the floor would start to feel a bit hard. But I had never appreciated how absolutely excruciating to just sit, for hours and hours on end, with minimal adjustments. I would usually have my hands upwards on my knees, but had to move them to resting in my lap after the tension in my shoulders became unbearable. Every rest break I was massaging and stretching in vain.

But still, though the pain and mental chatter, I’d have stretches of pure conscious awareness that were comparatively blissful. I went from barely being able to feel any touch of breath over the skin to being aware of the movement of even individual nose hairs. I’ve never been so closely acquainted with any part of my body!

Day 4-7

After the first three days of tuning the mind to sensation over thought, we turned to the actual vipassana technique. Again, it’s incredibly straightforward: starting at the top of your head, you do the same thing as you’ve been doing with the skin below the nose - focus on any and all sensation there. Then slowly move down: the face, the neck, the shoulders, the arms, the torso… on reaching your toes, just move the focus up again, and repeat!

A very valid question to ask is what exactly is this all doing? In essence, it’s about cultivating equanimity. It’s observing sensation without craving or aversion, remaining neutral towards pleasure and pain, and simply observing the impermanence of all experiences as they arise and pass⁴.

Without wanting to sound too woo-woo (!), it’s based on the idea that we can go through life storing up conditioned reactions (sankhāras) each time strong cravings or aversion arise (this is actually well-documented in the scientific literature too, as explored in books like The Body Keeps The Score). By remaining equanimous to physical sensation, it lets them come to the surface from deep in the subconscious. As they arise, and if you don’t react, they dissolve.

As part of developing this practice of neutrality, the teacher, Goenka⁵, introduced Adhitthana, or “sittings of strong determination”. While previously it was acceptable to make small adjustments whilst sitting, in these sessions the focus was on trying as best as possible to remain totally still for an entire hour. Challenge accepted.

Except, I might have just underestimated it slightly. Turns out the micro-adjustments I’d been doing had been pretty crucial, and without them, the pain was immense. Around 45 minutes in, grimacing and with a few tears streaming down my face, I just had to do a bit of a butt shuffle and conceded defeat.

Later that day at lunch, I was handed a post-it from one of the two lovely course leaders with instructions to see the teacher. Slightly confused, I headed over to see what it was about. We could speak with the teacher independently each day at lunch but I’d not yet been - I figured the answers to nearly every question was “observe, don’t react!” haha. The theory was simple, the execution wasn’t.

Turns out she’d noticed me looking in a considerable amount of pain, and wanted to affirm the practice was about gently prolonging our tolerance, not torture. It was a good reminder for me to be gentle over stubborn sometimes, and have more grace with myself. I left the meeting feeling a lot more assured.

Increasingly over this period, equipped with the new technique, I was becoming closely aware of more and more sensation throughout my body. Pleasure and pain intermingled, and I observed both (mostly!) without reaction. The sense of “I” itself even got distorted in a way that is experientially so clear and yet so difficult to communicate. My mind, intermittently, quietened. In our breaks, I was no longer restless, but so content to just lie out on a bench and bask in the autumn sun, or crouch down and examine each blade of grass. There was a robin that would occasionally hop up to me inquisitively. Sometimes there would be a small group of us watching him, and you could sense everyone’s inward smiles even without looking to their faces.

But these were the “good” parts. It would be WONDERFUL if it really was, oh first 3 days, hard! Next 4 days, oh I understand it now, I’m getting better! Final 3 days, enlightenment! As with everything, the trajectory was incredibly volatile. It was really difficult to not have expectations of what I “should” be feeling or experiencing, or to await if a “life-changing” part was going to happen. The looooooooong stretches of meditation (the 2 hours first thing and 3 hours post-lunch seemed especially tough!) sometimes seemed never-ending. Occasionally I just wanted to scream and leg it out that meditation hall for good.

But (spoiler) I did persevere! And on day 6, something very very interesting happened. I felt a strange sensation in my left foot, almost that it was very slightly sliding of its own accord across the floor. The teaching is that if, whilst doing the body scan, you feel an unusual sensation, to focus in on it regardless of where you are because it might be a sankhāra surfacing. So I did just that, and almost immediately, got hit by a wave of what I can only describe as panic. But objective panic, manifested through raw physical sensation alone and stripped of all mental narratives. My heart started pounding, I was borderline hyperventilating and my eyelids started fluttering like I was getting exorcised. Maybe in a way I kind of was…?

This can’t have lasted for more than 10 seconds before receding. In the moments after, I was really trying to remain equanimous and not immediately intellectualise it. As I settled back in, a few more waves arose, but not nearly as intense as the first. After the evening meditation that day, I spoke with the teacher about it, who affirmed it was likely to be some form of past experience arising. I asked about knowing the origin, and she said sometimes you got a sense of what it related to, and sometimes not.

I figured I’d probably worked through it, which can only have been a good thing, and settled down to sleep that night. Except I didn’t really sleep. Whatever I’d unearthed had put my body into absolute fight or flight, and my heart was still racing. At 2am, with only 2 hours until the wake-up gong, I went to sit outside and look at the stars. I’d got better at the whole observe-without-reaction practice, but this was testing me haha. It was really difficult to quell the narrative of asking what the hell was going on - though more from genuine curiosity and wonderment than anxiety.

The next day, day 7, was really the peak of whatever was coming up. I would continue to get waves of panic, though again, not as intense as the first. At the beginning of the mid-morning session that day, I sat down at my place, yet before the meditation had even commenced felt my chest tighten and my breathing start to hitch. I realised I needed to get out and headed quickly to the meditation hall foyer where it escalated into a full-blown panic attack. The thing is, it’s really difficult to write about these things without implying the associated semantic baggage of these words! It was a panic attack, yet again, through raw sensation and physical response alone. My mind was relatively clear, and simply observing this experience with an air of intrigue. One of the course leaders was there with me, who spoke with the teacher who allowed me to lie down in my room for the remainder of the session. Later, she called me for a meeting. I must have looked a sight, because the panic was still so near the surface, and I couldn’t stop shaking or continually welling up. She was SO kind and reassuring, explaining it was a sign I was working hard at the practice (what a great reward haha!), but that it was “an unusually strong reaction”. She would continue checking in with me for the remainder of the course, which I was so grateful for!

Day 8-10

Day 7 and into the beginning of day 8 continued to be punctuated by episodes of panic. It was super interesting to be having these sensations, but come at them with curiosity. How exactly where they manifesting? Sometimes it would be in my chest, other times tightness and tingling in my legs.

That said, unfortunately, I was not yet Buddha-level of equanimity. In between managing to be objective and neutral, the intensity of it would wear at me. I genuinely scared it wouldn’t pass, and found it hilariously ironic that I’d come to better my mental wellbeing and now felt like I’d “given myself” clinical anxiety. I was SO immensely glad it wasn’t a week long, because I didn’t feel able to face being unleashed into the outside world and cope with feeling like this.

Days 9 and 10 though, marked a turning point. Not in the “story-book” ending kind of way, where beyond the panic I finally had some life-changing enlightenment. But for me, it was its own kind of valuable outcome. Amongst the really intense sensations coming up, I’d still been trying to really stick to the practice - the movement of focus up and down the body, observing sensation. But even with the acute panic now receded, I was really exhausted. My mind would frequently feel like it was shutting down whenever I attempted to concentrate. I spoke to the teacher about it, and she said, ever wisely, that I’d had a tough course and to simply try and focus on the sensation available to me, such as the hands. Vipassana was “work” and “effort” but shouldn’t feel like you’re “trying” in a way that exhausts you. This was the one thing I wish I’d clarified and didn’t quite grasp, but maybe it comes with practice.

And so I dropped the “trying”! I sat there, observed my hands, and as the end of the course drew near, just felt an overwhelming sense of peace and pride in myself. I was amazed at how I could now sit for hours on end with minimal discomfort - I was in the exact same position, but the pain, without reactions, had just dissolved.

What you’re really “aiming” towards is having total bodily awareness in a way that you can sweep focus effortlessly up and down, the entire body alighting in tingling sensations that feel blissful and joyous and through which radical insights and revelations can arise. But to say you’re “aiming” is to miss the point of vipassana. It becomes expectation, craving, ego. Ultimately you can’t have the ying without the yang, the pleasant without the pain. They are all simply impermanent, objective manifestations of sensations. I’ve heard of many a story of people’s vipassana experience characterised by immense joy and peace and radical revelations. While I had glimpses of these moments, mine very much serves as a counterweight haha! But that doesn’t make it any lesser. I absolutely wouldn’t change it.

Breaking the silence towards the end of day 10 was a surreal experience. There was such a spectrum of reactions! I spoke with one woman who quietly said it always took her a few days to really start communicating again (she’d done other vipassanas). For another it was as though the floodgates opened and a week’s worth of words came tumbling out in a few hours. I immediately gravitated towards Fahim and Philippa, where we spoke about our experiences. It had been one of the best things both of them had done. You feel deeply bonded with every single person there, like you’ve truly gone through a warzone together and miraculously come out the other side. I genuinely cried saying goodbye to Fahim and Philippa, even though we’d really only communicated verbally for a small part of two days! I really hope they’re both doing well now - the experience really wouldn’t have been the same without them.

The Lessons

And so here’s a few things I learnt!

1. Impermanence characterises everything - it’s one thing to intellectually understand things are fleeting, but it’s another to really experience and grasp the reality of it

2. Experience is just sensation - if you remove the mental narrative from pain or “negative” feelings, but instead observe with neutral curiosity how they’re manifesting physically, they lose power

3. Suffering stems from trying to change what is - acceptance is powerful!

4. The world is SUPER INCREDIBLY stimulating - and that becomes our baseline! It was quite overwhelming initially going back to the outside world after the course. For at least the first week I felt no desire whatsoever for distraction - I didn’t read or watch anything, and was genuinely content to just exist. Now I’ve readjusted, unfortunately, that seems pretty incomprehensible to me haha!

5. There’s great joy in noticing - I became so closely acquainted with the squirrels and the robin and the patterning of the leaves on the trees, and it was wondrous! They’re things we so easily overlook!

6. When the mind is at rest, it needs much less sleep - I was amazed I wasn’t exhausted everyday waking up at 4am, but really the brain was in a “resting” state much of the day

7. Often it’s not a good idea to trust blindly without questioning, but sometimes it is - the teaching was not, whatsoever, dogmatic. It was “trust in this method for 10 days, without imposing any of your preconceptions or alternative techniques, and see what happens. Afterwards, you are free to drop it altogether or pick and choose elements”. Sometimes it’s just about being open-minded

8. The subconscious really does hold on to a lot - I unearthed reactions that were clearly quite content to remain within until over 60 hours of focussed meditation. The intensity of my experience has shown me I probably suppress things I lot more than I realise. I’m way more careful to feel my feelings now

9. There’s a lot of liberation in being able to depend on yourself - I wanted a hug sooo many times! It’s nice to have that, but it might not always be there. If you can pick yourself back up, that’s an amazing thing. That said, I valued the connections I made with the incredible people there (especially our trio!) SO MUCH

10. Don’t take it all too seriously - Goenka, the original teacher, was actually hilarious. It made things so much lighter! He did have the most tuneless, ear-grating chanting I’ve ever heard though, which he would also acknowledge. I can still hear it now

A quote from the book Sapiens I came across in a blog describes the crux of it all well:

“People are liberated from suffering not when they experience this or that fleeting pleasure, but rather when they understand the impermanent nature of all their feelings and stop craving them. This is the aim of Buddhist meditation practices. In meditation, you are supposed to closely observe your mind and body, witness the ceaseless arising and passing of all your feelings, and realize how pointless it is to pursue them. When the pursuit stops, the mind becomes very relaxed, clear and satisfied. All kinds of feelings go on arising and passing—joy, anger, boredom, lust—but once you stop craving particular feelings, you can just accept them for what they are. You live in the present moment instead of fantasizing about what might have been.

The resulting serenity is so profound that those who spend their lives in the frenzied pursuit of pleasant feelings can hardly imagine it. It is like a man standing for decades on the seashore, embracing certain ‘good’ waves and trying to prevent them from disintegrating while simultaneously pushing back ‘bad’ waves to prevent them from getting near him. Day in, day out, the man stands on the beach, driving himself crazy with this fruitless exercise. Eventually, he sits down on the sand and just allows the waves to come and go as they please. How peaceful!”

The Takeaway

And so my closing point - I absolutely think more people should be open to try a vipassana, or something similar! With the necessary caveat of when they feel ready, with enough mental grit, because it’s really not to be taken lightly. I absolutely intend on doing another eventually, as I do feel I have unfinished business haha!⁶ So we’ll see what that one brings!