‘Word by Word’ is a column by Garima Behal on learning to ride the highs and lows of everyday life

I scanned my body again. My chest and gut felt strangely light. The familiar feeling was gone. I’ve always been on the edge, always anxious. And after a stalking incident just a few days ago, the anxiety should have been stronger, right?

That was when I knew how life-changing the last 10 days had been. 

Was I anxiety-free? Completely? Forever? Probably not. 

Yet, I’ve never felt this calm, assured, and at peace. 

It’s been 5 days since I returned from the Dhamma Thali Vipassana Meditation Center in Jaipur. And I’ve never, with a stronger conviction, felt that things will be a-okay. That I am going to be a-okay.

It took a lot to get here, though. And this 10-day Vipassana course was the second toughest thing I’ve ever done.

The theory of suffering

I’ve always been a ‘sentimental fool.’ I thought it was utterly robotic, even unhealthy, to expect human beings not to react to our thoughts and emotions. Doesn’t all modern mental health advice encourage us to “feel all our feelings”?

Turns out Vipassana does the same. Rediscovered by Gautama Buddha 2500 years ago in India, this ancient meditation technique promises to take an individual to the ultimate goal of liberation from suffering (Nirvana) through self-awareness and detached equanimity. 

Vipassana means: Seeing reality as it is and not as you want it to be. It’s a Middle Path—one where there’s neither suppression nor expression of feelings, just a detached yet mindful observation of what’s happening inside the mind and body as we interact with the world. 

In other words, I still get to feel all my feelings, observe the fleeting sensations they produce inside my body, understand their nature of arising and passing, and watch them disappear, realizing that everything is impermanent and subject to change. And that craving after the ‘good’ and running from the ‘bad’ only produces suffering because they’re both inevitable aspects of life.

A lofty goal, eh? But, having heard glowing testimonials from friends and family, I knew I had to give the course a shot.

Trial by fire

It began on Day 0, with us committing to a vow of noble silence for the duration of the program. Our phones, gadgets, and reading and writing material were taken away. We were neither allowed to communicate with the outside world nor permitted to talk, touch, gesture, or even make eye contact with fellow students.

From Day 1, our mornings began at 4:30 a.m. with a 2-hour meditation session followed by 8.5 more hours of meditation each day and rest periods in between.

As we started meditating on the breath in silence, my unforgiving mental chatter slowly grew louder. Whenever I tried to concentrate, my mind galloped in a million directions. Fantasies of traveling to exotic places, hopes of happily ever afters, horrors of imagining my parents’ deaths. And everything beautiful and frightening in between.

As a result, on Day 2, I had an anxiety attack. My breath heaved, my head throbbed, and my heart beat ferociously against my chest, threatening to smash my ribcage and explode in the meditation hall. The whole debacle was followed by a flood of tears, spurred on by dark memories of each breakup conversation…the tremendous self-pity, seething anger, and the rest of the emotional baggage that came with it. 

Days 3 and 4 were better, but only slightly. The mental chatter started calming down, and I could better focus on the present moment, the inhalation, and the exhalation. I breathed easier despite minor anxiety episodes surfacing now and then. 

But I was confronted with another challenge: A bout of cervical pain so severe that my neck and right shoulder felt like they’d split from the rest of my body and fall off. I battled the pain as best as I could for 2 days. Then, I pleaded with the teacher for advice.

 “I haven’t even applied Volini gel, you know,” I complained like a child who was proud but tired of her bravery. “You can, you know!” she replied. 

“But I don’t want to! I am not that weak.”

“The only way out is through. Is acceptance. To not make your physical pain mental,” she said. 

The only way was equanimity. Of course! I knew the answer—it was being drilled into me through the course instructions daily, but hearing her say it made all the difference. 

“Just observe your pain and watch it dissolve,” she suggested. I did that. But I also wore a makeshift sling of my dupatta to keep my shoulder from cramping up badly.

When nothing lasts forever

On day 5, the pain disappeared almost magically, dissolving into a mass of heightened vibrations. End of story?

Far from it. 

The cervical pain had been so severe I had forgotten all about my sciatica. After 10 hours of daily sitting with my legs folded, without any back support, it manifested itself in all its brutal glory—pulsating through my left leg, knee, glutes, and already injured back.  

Great! I thought to myself, at first. The thought was soon replaced by: Let me see what happens if I just observe it. Let me see what happens if I don’t fight it this much. Let me see how long before it passes away too, the way all things, good and bad, do.

It didn’t go away completely like the shoulder pain, no. But, it did become bearable enough to meditate without needing to change my posture or run out of the hall every few minutes, internally chanting “equanimity, equanimity…Where the hell is your equanimity, Garima?”

The attitudinal shift was unexpected. 

I had suddenly made the giant leap from giving in to negative emotions and being held their prisoner to acting as a neutral observer. I had understood, through actual experience, that things weren’t happening to me. They were simply happening. And would not last forever. 

With this realization, my meditation practice became easier, inspiring more confidence in the remaining days. 

I had previously heard stories of people experiencing even physical rapture and mental bliss during Vipassana, taking the accounts with a grain of salt. I didn’t know then that I would experience the same rapture and bliss the very next day. And for each of the 5 days that remained. 

Stepping into bliss

On Day 6, I meditated and observed bodily sensations while remaining equanimous to them as usual when suddenly I was thrown off balance. My body started tingling with an undercurrent of electric vibrations, feeling lighter than air, feeling like it wasn’t made of solid matter but millions of wavelets, bouncing speedily from my head to toes and vice-versa. 

It was a while before I was reminded that I had to be neutral and not expect this pleasant feeling to stay. After all, sensations, whether painful or pleasurable, are still temporary, and I could not get attached. DAMN, THIS WAS HARDER than I had imagined.

It took a lot of nudging and pushing and reminding and cajoling to regain non-reactivity to bliss and treat it the same as pain—with all of the acceptance and none of the clinging. But slowly, through brute determination on days 6 through 9, I could do it.

The only constant

I returned home a different person than the one who went for the course. And I don’t just mean with respect to the anxiety. 

I now see beautiful flowers and delight in getting to know them while understanding they’re here to wither away. I let aches and pains come up without repeating how much they hurt because I know that most of them won’t last, anyway. I pause before raising my voice. I take a deep breath when anger strikes and watch it blossom into compassion.

I try not to exaggerate things. Or even downplay them. Instead, I am moving toward accepting them for what they are, watching reality for what it is—ephemeral—as I do the toughest thing in my life: Practice Vipassana, one sitting at a time.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author’s own and do not reflect those of MyndStories. As a first-person account, this is not verified or vetted by our in-house review board.