Tasting The Power of An Ancient Mind-Body Technology: My First Vipassana Course

I am not religious, and neither is Vipassana, but my first taste of the technique, an ancient mind-body technology, felt borderline spiritual: it held the power of a life-changing psychedelic experience. I also had the same reaction I do at the end of an especially impactful trip: let’s give access to this potent tool to everyone in the world ASAP. And much like a life-changing psychedelic experience, it was not easy.

My Worst Night

“What the fuck? What the FUCK!”

The words erupted from my lips before I could stop them, shattering the silence. I sat upright in the pitch darkness, hoping I hadn’t woken my neighbors. I wanted to sleep so desperately, but I felt like I’d been dosed with LSD. For three hours, my mind had been a runaway train, furiously drafting a science fiction novel, blueprinting a climate tech startup, scripting an erotic screenplay, designing a meditation app, and planning a new Burning Man camp. My awareness of every sensation had been amplified to an extreme intensity: my heart’s every contraction thumping against my ribcage and the mattress below, the blood pulsing warm and electric through my face and extremities, individual fibers of the rough blanket tickling my torso, strands of hair laying against my forehead, patches of inexplicable tingling across my scalp, the heat and sweat where my thighs met, and the September air flowing cool over my exposed skin, the hairs picking up the movement like tiny antennae.

My alarm clock lay face down on the bedside table, but I knew it was nearly 1 AM. The morning bells would slice through my earplugs at 4:00 AM and 4:20 AM, summoning us to begin another full day of meditation. I was stripped of all my usual coping mechanisms for sleep: no New York Times crossword app to distract my racing mind, no book to escape into, no journal to dump my mental chaos onto paper, not even the primal release of masturbation. Every distraction and technology surrendered at the beginning of the course. When I’d asked about sleep troubles earlier that day, one of the teachers had said, laughing, “Don’t worry about sleep. My first course? I didn’t sleep for ten days straight!”

Terror started to creep in. Had I irreversibly rewired my brain? Was this some elaborate cult I had gotten mixed up in? I had a terrible thought: I wanted to be dull again, reverted to my previous state of ignorance - I wanted to close this Pandora’s box of acute awareness that I’d opened. Eventually, desperation drove me to the shower where the hot water soothed me and forced my core body temp to drop, allowing me to collapse back into bed and into a fitful sleep full of surreal dreams.

Arriving at Dhamma Dhara

I had wanted to do Vipassana for years, having heard about it from some friends in San Francisco in 2018. My two attempts to join a course before had been thwarted, once by a family emergency and once by the arrival of COVID. Now I finally had my chance. I was completely unattached - I was taking a break from work, had no committed romantic partner, no apartment or house of my own, no pets and no children, and I was still digesting my father’s death. I was looking for a reset to launch me into my next phase of life.

My formal meditation practice was non-existent - good luck getting me to sit for more than 10 minutes. But I knew the power of meditation and had been exposed to mindfulness practices when I was fresh out of college, volunteering at a Buddhist center for addiction recovery outside of Chiang Rai in northern Thailand. There, I participated in yoga and meditation workshops daily for a couple months. I have a very visceral memory of taking a local bus ride towards the end of my stay: sitting on a terribly uncomfortable hard wooden bench, surrounded by people holding squawking chickens, unbearable heat and choking diesel exhaust pouring in through the open windows, I was able to find refuge in my breath and have a calm ride, accepting reality for what it was. Meditation, prescribed by a very good and very expensive psychiatrist, had also saved me from mild depression my first time living in Manhattan and helped me take control of my life, decrease my anxiety, and change my circumstances.

I arrived at Dhamma Dhara Vipassana center in northern Massachusetts on a beautiful September afternoon. I had no idea what to expect, other than the beautiful aerial photos of the campus on Google Maps. The entire 10-day course, room and board included, is completely free and run by volunteers, so I was surprised when Daniel, a cheerful man in his 50s, greeted me and helped carry my tote and duffel into the registration rotunda like a bellhop.

“Packed light, eh?” he quipped.

I mentally inventoried my austere wardrobe: ten pairs of underwear, five pairs of merino wool socks, five merino shirts, and one synthetic jacket. I would be fine.

I was early, so after registration and surrendering of my phone and wallet, I wanted to explore the campus. Mary, another volunteer, pointed me toward a gravel path blocked by a chain.

“You can follow the fire road to find trails and the meditation pagoda,” she said.

“Past that chain?” I asked, confused.

“Yes,” she smiled. “That’s not to keep people out. It’s to keep you in.”

We both laughed, but the joke carried weight. Vipassana isn’t a drop-in meditation class. When you sign up for the 10 day course, you’re committing to the full journey, though several people in my cohort would ultimately break that commitment and retreat back to the default world. They disappeared quietly, their empty meditation pads and dining chairs the only indication they’d left.

The ones that made it though were an interesting assortment of men: a recent divorcee who had his entire life in the back of his Corolla heading west to start anew, a gay house husband fresh off of a drug-filled bender, a Sikh battery technology startup founder California, an immigrant living in New Jersey with a family dealing with alcoholism, a father of two from Kentucky, a man working in sales at a marketing startup, a guy who wore t-shirts with JESUS emblazoned collegiate-style on the front, a recent college grad becoming a psychedelic therapist, a professional musician from Brooklyn, a man whose Indian wife had wanted him to take the course, a man whose estranged daughter had done a course and wanted him to take one as well as part of a healing process, and a Vietnamese man whose brother, father and mother were also there taking the course.

There were about 60 men and 40 women total at the course. Despite our diverse backgrounds—from deeply religious to secular, from struggling with addiction to seeking performance enhancement, from twenty-somethings to retirees—we were all there for the same fundamental reason: to understand our minds better.

The Course Begins

The structure was simple and brutal. Wake at 4 AM. Meditate for two hours. Breakfast at 6:30. More meditation. Lunch at 11 AM (the last meal for “old students”; new students like me got fruit and tea at 5 PM). More meditation. Evening discourse. More meditation. Sleep at 9:30 PM. Repeat.

I maintained noble silence with my fellow students until the 10th day: no talking, no eye contact, no gestures, or any type of communication. Just me, my mind and body, and approximately one hundred hours to become intimately acquainted with both. Men and women were separated, existing in parallel universes on the same property. We were instructed to work as if alone, though surrounded by others engaged in the same internal excavation.

The meditation hall became my little universe. Square cushions, and assorted pillows, small sitting/kneeling benches, and blankets marked our designated spots and our attempts to get comfortable. I cannot sit cross-legged for the life of me - I’ve never been able to, even as a child. I remember being so intensely uncomfortable trying to sit on the floor of the gymnasium during meetings and events, while my peers sat easily crosslegged or kneeling. When I have meditated in the past, I have sat in the seiza, or kneeling, posture. But I realized that even that position turned into excruciating knee pain after about 20 minutes, even with additional padding and a small wooden bench for my butt (there was a whole closet full of cushions and benches we could raid). I liked how my back felt in seiza, so I would do that for as long as possible and then transition to a sitting position with a back support and pillows under my knees, like a budget zero gravity chair. In that position, I could get more intimate with “subtle” sensations and less with “gross” sensations of pain. During the latter half of the course, “strong determination sittings” meant no movement for a full hour - no adjusting, no stretching, just pure presence with whatever arose. The simple act of sitting became its own form of trial for the strength of my focus and my ability to greet both subtle and gross sensations with equanimity, acknowledging them as impermanent phenomena - neither pain nor pleasure last forever.

For the first three days, we practiced the Anapana meditation technique - narrowing our attention to the breath, specifically the subtle sensations around the nostrils. This alone seemed like medicine for my ADHD. My mind fought for its freedom to be wild and untamed, dragging up every memory, fantasy, and random thought it could muster. I could observe and be unattached to all the replays of the past (I can do nothing about them, ever) and scheming about plans for the future (I can do nothing about them at this moment), instead bringing myself and my awareness to the present moment, to the metronome of my breath. Anapana is the foundation for Vipassana, preparing the mind for the next level of awareness and concentration.

We Learn Vipassana

Day 4 arrived: Vipassana Day. This was when we learned the technique that would supposedly liberate us from suffering. S.N. Goenka, our teacher via 90-minute evening video discourses recorded before his death in 2013, explained how he’d rediscovered this technique in Burma (now Myanmar) in its pure form, 2,500 years after Buddha originally discovered and taught it. The technique had spread from India across Asia but had been modified and diluted over millennia until its essence was lost. Goenka brought its pure form back to India in 1969 and spent his life spreading it globally through hundreds of centers, all operating on donation basis, all maintaining the exact same schedule and instruction.

Vipassana means “to see things as they really are.” The technique involves systematically scanning your body, observing sensations without judgment, developing equanimity toward both pleasant and unpleasant experiences. The theory: everything is impermanent (in Pali, what the Buddha spoke, anicca), and suffering arises from our cravings and aversions to these temporary sensations. Master equanimity toward sensation, and you master your reactions to life itself.

It sounds philosophical, abstract. But the practice is viscerally physical. Even by the evening of Day 4, I could feel distinct sensations in places I’d never noticed—the space between my fingers, the backs of my eyelids, my earlobes. Sometimes pleasant tingles, sometimes stabbing pains, sometimes nothing at all. The instruction remained constant: observe with equanimity. Don’t create a craving for the pleasant. Don’t create an aversion to the unpleasant. Just observe.

I was blown away that the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, had discovered the inner workings of his mind and the connection between mind and body, and how to control these, 2500 years ago and without modern technology or neuroscience. He had just taken the time, and had the curiosity, to sit with himself to figure out how to stop human suffering and then taught the technique tirelessly for 45 years until his last breath.

During the assistant teacher’s daily office hours, I peppered him with questions about technique, about Goenka’s discourses, and about my inability to sleep. Of course there were many things in the discourses I had to take with a grain of salt - the notion of the cycle of death and rebirth, the claim that there was no scripture while we had to follow certain moral tenets called Sīla (like no lying or exaggerating). To his credit, in one of the last discourses, Goenka said that we didn’t have to believe anything he said, and that the most important thing for us take away was the technique.

On Day 5, after my Vipassana-induced night-four insomnia, I must have looked thoroughly bushwhacked: the course manager offered me special accommodations - an evening meal. I refused, determined to complete the course as designed, though I appreciated the compassion behind the offer.

Outside of Meditation

Breaks in between meditations gave me the chance to stretch my body and get my blood flowing. The center’s trails wound through beautiful New England woods, past a babbling brook and a small meadow. Chipmunks, rabbits, and squirrels barely took note of us and seemed accustomed to the somewhat quiet, non-aggressive humans walking around. I enjoyed watching them play and scamper around. I spotted white-tail deer several times, and once, an enormous porcupine lumbering along. There was a sign deeper in the woods that said there had been a recent bear sighting and to be cautious around that area. “Course Boundary” signs marked the edges of our temporary hermitage, beyond which the real world continued its chaos without us.

At meals, we all sat at small desks in the men’s dining hall, eating silently. The food was so good, I’m sure some of us developed a craving for it - I thought they could have made it a little more austere. Breakfast and lunch (there was no dinner) were basically all you can eat buffets of delicious vegetarian / vegan food - on two separate days we had rich curries, one day we had Vietnamese vermicelli with tofu, vegetables and fresh herbs, and one day, to my astonishment, we had one of my favorite dishes: pho, the nourishing Vietnamese soup, complete with garnishes and sauces. There was always fresh salad with toppings and amazing freshly-made dressings, a wide variety of teas, 3 types of organic milk (whole dairy, soy, rice), fresh fruits, and local whole fat yoghurt. There was even a warm honey dispenser with a hand pump that I added into tea, yoghurt, and onto peanut butter toast. We certainly didn’t go hungry.

Twice during the course, I cried. Once while thinking about my father, who’d passed a year earlier. I desperately wished he could have experienced this—the silence, the simplicity, the potential for peace. The second time was pure gratitude, overwhelming appreciation for this place, this technique, these volunteers who made it possible for anyone to come and learn, regardless of financial means.

A Shift and The Finish Line

By day seven, the manic psychedelic energy of Day 4 had softened into clarity. I could sit for full hours without agony. Sensations arose and passed, arose and passed, and I watched them like weather patterns, neither grasping nor pushing away. The technique revealed its power not through mystical experience but through practical application. My addiction to a particular mobile game or the intense pining after a particular woman? I could now feel the physical craving arise when I thought about it, observe it objectively, and watch it dissolve.

A week before the course, I’d quit everything: alcohol, drugs, pornography. The course provided tools to observe these cravings without immediately reacting, to sit with discomfort without reaching for numbness, distraction, temporary ecstasy, or entertainment.

In my mind, Vipassana succeeds where purely intellectual philosophies like Stoicism fall short—it addresses the animal body’s role in mental patterns. You can’t think your way out of a panic attack, but you can observe the physical sensations, whether primal or conditioned, acknowledge their impermanence, treat them with equanimity and compassion, and gradually train your nervous system to respond differently to them. Such command certainly doesn’t happen over night, and even the 10-day course was just scratching the surface.

When noble silence ended on day ten, the dormitory halls exploded with conversation. We’d been through something together, even while rigorously alone. Stories poured out: who’d wanted to leave, who’d had breakthrough moments, who’d spent entire sittings planning their post-retreat meal.

Take-Aways

The mind-body technology I had acquired was invaluable. I could adjust, in a very real and durable sense, my reactions to the vicissitudes of life with my own mind, without the help of continuous therapy or psychedelic drugs? I could break thought and behavior patterns just by becoming more in-tune with the sensations of my body? In some ways, it made perfect sense, in line with some of the little I knew about neuroscience and how traumas and memories are stored not only in the mind but in the body as well. I wanted this technique to be given to everyone, taught in schools - are there really more valuable tools to have on life’s journey other than to have control over your reactions and thought and behavior patterns? I was curious about the future of Vipassana, so I talked to some of the volunteers and administrative staff.

The organization felt somewhat bureaucratic and disconnected from modernity (maybe by design?). The website looked straight from the early 2000s and had been a little frustrating to use. When I offered to help modernize their digital presence, I was warned about “ruffling feathers” and “egos” - in an organization teaching ego dissolution, the irony was not lost on me. I began envisioning “NeoVipassana”, the technique stripped of religious trappings, backed by neuroscience, more accessible and scalable. My entrepreneurial mind couldn’t help optimizing. Yet optimization-obsessed culture, perhaps we need spaces that resist efficiency, that demand we slow down and simply sit with what is. I just hope we can slow down fast enough.

It’s been weeks since I returned from the course. I maintain my daily practice and sobriety. I am feeling good. Software projects I’d procrastinated on are now progressing, I am less anxious about the future, feeling more grounded and empowered. I have been around friends doing some of my favorite drugs and haven’t felt the urge to participate; I do not feel the magnetic pull of mindless video games.

Would I recommend ten days of noble silence? Absolutely, with caveats. This isn’t a relaxation retreat, or a retreat at all - it is a course, and you are a student. It’s a mental and physical boot camp. You’ll confront behavior and thought patterns, addictions, every story you tell yourself. You’ll want to leave. You’ll question your sanity. You might not sleep for days.

But you’ll also discover that beneath the mental noise lies profound stillness, and the agency to change your mind is very much within your own power, the tools are within your own mind and body. Physical pain and pleasure is just sensation, and sensation is impermanent. You can observe your thoughts without becoming them. Liberation isn’t escape from reality but full presence with what is, as it is, knowing it will change. Wake up. Pay attention. All of this is temporary. And that’s precisely what makes it precious.

If you’re interested in taking a course, visit https://www.dhamma.org/