10 days of silence

I just came back from a 10-days silent meditation course. (Vipassana)

People have asked me, how was it?

It took my a couple of days to know what to say.

In the upcoming weeks I will get deeper into what happen and what changes in my life and Nuad Thai Yoga practice it took.

This week I want to focus on something that I found not as hard as I thought it would be.

To be in noble silence where you don´t talk to anyone for 10 days. (Besides the teacher and a general manager when you had questions about the practice)

Being a person who have had the iPhone stuck to my hip for the last couple of years, and being used to talk to vent and connecting, I thought the silence would be very hard.

Also, knowing that I would be stuck with my own thoughts without escape (facebook,  emails, TV) that was very scary to me. Would things come up that I pushed down deep inside me? Would I suffer every moment of it?

The experience of a Vipassana meditation course is completely different from person to person, so what I experienced is totally individual.

What I experienced when the silence started was a big ease inside. A calm came over me. I felt relaxed and being in the present moment became easier than it has have been in many many years.

It was not scary to be alone with my thoughts, it was not scary to be silence. It was a big relief!

The meditation was hard many times, and things did come up. But the whole practice is about feeling your body's sensations, with a calm mind, so it´s not about thinking.

When I signed up I had no idea what it was about besides what I had heard and read. I just went with my gut, and I am so happy that I did.

Two big things I want to share with you this week that I learned and got confirmed:

 

  •  If you are scared of being alone with your own thoughts, challenge it and try it for yourself. Leave your phone at home for a couple of hours so that you can´t use that when you feel bored or restless. Or, do something around the house without music or anything that distract yourself. Just be with yourself. It´s not about letting your thoughts take over. It´s about staying in the present moment, exactly where you are there and then.

 

  • Listen to your gut, when you have a decisions to do. Scared to do so? Try it once this week, if you have a smaller decision to make and not sure what. Check in with your gut and just go with whatever it says.

Try these two things this week and report back here. What did you find out? Or maybe you did not find out anything, whatever happens or not, its all good:

Metta - Love and Compassion

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