Their anxiety and depression levels were lower after the training. According to a review , mindfulness programs, including Vipassana meditation, may help alter parts of the brain involved in anxiety. A study of 36 individuals upon completing a day Vipassana retreat found a significant increase in well-being and a possible, though inconclusive, improvement in heart function. In a study of individuals, those who practiced Vipassana reported higher levels of:.
Practicing meditation, including Vipassana meditation, may help increase your brain plasticity. In other words, your brain can create new pathways to improve mental functioning and well-being throughout your life. A small study found that a regular Vipassana practice may help promote brain plasticity. The researchers came to this conclusion by using neuroimaging scans to examine the brain networks of Vipassana practitioners. An older study found that Vipassana meditation may benefit those with substance abuse.
The researchers noted that the practice might be an alternative for conventional addiction treatments. According to a review , mindfulness-based training programs with Vipassana components may improve such factors as self-control over habits, decision-making, and response inhibition, all of which are crucial to reducing drug use and maintaining abstinence. Additionally, meditation can ease stress, a factor linked to substance use.
More research is needed, however, to understand how Vipassana can manage addiction. Vipassana is an ancient mindfulness meditation technique. Though more studies are needed, research to date has found that Vipassana can reduce stress and anxiety, which may have benefits for substance use. It may also promote brain plasticity. To get started with Vipassana, begin with 5- to minute sessions in a quiet space.
Slowly increase this to 15 minutes or longer as you get used to this form of meditation. You can also listen to audio recordings or attend a class for guided mediations. Meditation is the process of redirecting your thoughts to calm your mind.
It may also improve your overall quality of life. If you pursue your meditation practice with this attitude, you will succeed. Life then takes on an unbelievable richness which cannot be described. It has to be experienced. The Pali term for Insight meditation is Vipassana Bhavana. Bhavana comes from the root bh, which means to grow or to become. Therefore Bhavana means to cultivate, and the word is always used in reference to the mind.
Bhavana means mental cultivation. Vipassana is derived from two roots. Passana means seeing or perceiving. Vi is a prefix with a complex set of connotations. The whole meaning of the word is looking into something with clarity and precision, seeing each component as distinct, and piercing all the way through so as to perceive the most fundamental reality of that thing.
This process leads to insight into the basic reality of whatever is being inspected. Put it all together and Vipassana Bhavana means the cultivation of the mind, aimed at seeing in the special way that leads to insight and to full understanding. Related: Theravada Vipassana Practice. The method we are explaining here is probably what Gotama Buddha taught his students. We sit, watching the air going in and out of our noses. At first glance, this seems an exceedingly odd and useless procedure.
Before going on to specific instructions, let us examine the reason behind it. The first question we might have is why use any focus of attention at all? We are, after all, trying to develop awareness. Why not just sit down and be aware of whatever happens to be present in the mind? In fact, there are meditations of that nature. They are sometimes referred to as unstructured meditation and they are quite difficult. The mind is tricky.
Thought is an inherently complicated procedure. By that we mean that we become trapped, wrapped up, and stuck in the thought chain. One thought leads to another which leads to another, and another, and another, and so on. Fifteen minutes later we suddenly wake up and realize we spent that whole time stuck in a daydream or sexual fantasy or a set of worries about our bills or whatever.
We use breath as our focus. It serves as that vital reference point from which the mind wanders and is drawn back. Distraction cannot be seen as distraction unless there is some central focus to be distracted from. That is the frame of reference against which we can view the incessant changes and interruptions that go on all the time as a part of normal thinking. Ancient Pali texts liken meditation to the process of taming a wild elephant.
The procedure in those days was to tie a newly captured animal to a post with a good strong rope. When you do this, the elephant is not happy. He screams and tramples, and pulls against the rope for days. At this point you can begin to feed him and to handle him with some measure of safety. Eventually you can dispense with the rope and post altogether, and train your elephant for various tasks. Now you have got a tamed elephant that can be put to useful work. In this analogy the wild elephant is your wildly active mind, the rope is mindfulness, and the post is our object of meditation, our breathing.
The tamed elephant who emerges from this process is a well-trained, concentrated mind that can then be used for the exceedingly tough job of piercing the layers of illusion that obscure reality.
Meditation tames the mind. The next question we need to address is: Why choose breathing as the primary object of meditation? Why not something a bit more interesting? Answers to this are numerous. A useful object of meditation should be one that promotes mindfulness.
It should be portable, easily available, and cheap. I was also dealing with chronic pain. A bad accident as a kid followed by a series of rib fractures and back injuries over the years generated a state of permanent hurt made worse with the lack of sleep and an excess of cortisol.
I chose this specific course, which took place in New Zealand, because despite the trendiness of meditation classes and apps , Vipassana seemed to be about equanimity, discipline and hard work — right up my alley. I am not the most woo woo of humans, and the idea of a giant drum circle of positive thinkers made me want to run away screaming.
Vipassana is different from mindfulness meditation, which focuses on awareness, or to transcendental meditation, which uses a mantra. Instead, it dictates a blanket command of non-reaction. No matter the pain as you sit, or the fact that your hands and legs fall asleep and that your brain is crying for release. You are instructed to refocus attention on the objective sensations in your body, arising and falling, as you do a scan of your limbs in a specific order. By doing so, over 10 days, you train yourself to stop reacting to the vicissitudes of life.
While descended from Buddhism, the modern-day courses are secular in nature. The father of these retreats is the late SN Goenka , who was raised in Myanmar and learned Vipassana from monks there. When a friend asked me why I was willingly heading into solitary confinement, especially since I had never meditated before, I told her I wanted to break my brain and put it back together again.
Jodi what are you doing to yourself? On the first day, a bell rang outside my door at 4am, reminding me that despite the darkness, it was time to wake up. I was not, nor will I ever be, a morning person. I felt a rush of anger rise up in me when I heard that sound, and fantasized about taking the gong and flinging it into the forest. So much for equanimity. I tumbled out of my cot and got ready for the 4. When your mind moved from that awareness you brought your mind back to the fact that you breathe.
The simplicity of this instruction felt incredibly futile. I had a hard time focusing on my breath because of the persistent burning in my back. Regardless of how many pillows I piled under my knees, it bubbled up until it hit a crescendo. You are allowed to speak to the teacher during office hours, and I went that first day, knotted in pain and panic. Eyeing me serenely, he asked how long I had been meditating. Plus my back was falling apart. I should leave, right? With total calm, he told me to disassociate my panic from the pain.
I was making it worse for myself by focusing on the hurt, which only magnified it for me. He told me to do my best, whatever that was. I trudged back out of the meditation hall and into the bright New Zealand sunlight, reeling.
The teacher offered a wooden L-shaped contraption to help prop up my back during the meditation. As to whether I was meditating correctly, he was silent. After the first three days of focusing on breathing, we were introduced to Vipassana. This involved sequences of long body scans in a specific order.
Throughout, we were instructed to be aware of the sensations or pain we feel. By not allowing ourselves to react to what our bodies felt, we were training our minds to build a barrier against blind reaction.
Instead, you refocus on the neck and ignore the part of your brain that is begging you to give attention to the leg pain.
You remind yourself that the pain is temporary, just like everything else. They occurred three times a day, during which we were not allowed to move. Your leg hurts? Too bad. You itch like mad on your nose? For the entire hour, you sit and you scan your body. Along the way if there are points of pain, you observe them impersonally as your scan reaches those points, knowing they are impermanent.
In response to these new requirements, a wave of people left the course. It took all of my energy not to walk out myself. I tried to remind myself it was only 10 days.
Surely I could handle 10 days of repetition and focus? I held on by a thread, until day five.
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