Vipassina Meditation Retreat

The experience of 10 days plus one of meditation for 11 hours a day is one that is hard to put to words. Having come from a life of very little formal meditation training and little practical practice I can say it was a crash course. I’m now sitting in a pub waiting for my train to Weymouth which is near the climbing area of Portland. I’m not finding time to reflect on my experience. I’m sure the train ride will provide even more time.

I feel at this moment, and have for the past 5 days, a sensation of being gently rocked as if bobbing in the rolling waves of the ocean. My back is a bit sore from the exertion, for the past five days we have done 3 of the 11 hours as hard determination where you do not move or change you posture. Needless to say this gives you ample time to work on the technique which essentially is to retrain the sensations good or bad to be view with the conscious mind in a state of equanimity.

The first three days of the course are set on sharpening the mind to the sensations (feelings) in the body through a meditation called Anne panna (sp?). The technique is focused on breathing and sensing the breath in the region around the nose. For these first days you are also free to rearrange your posture and stretch as needed.

On day 4 they teach you the primary meditation technique, Vipassina. This technique involves running your focus throughout the body to detect areas of pain or pleasure then viewing them as I said before equanimously (no reaction, no aversion, no craving). You see the body for how it is and how its feeling. This is also the point where they introduced the strong determination sittings and you try not to move or react to the sensations which in my case was pain.

By the 4th sittings on the fifth day I was questioning how I was going to make it through to the end of the course, the pain was so overwhelming. Then I had a sitting where I shifted my weight and all the pain and knots in my back melted away. I was good, and able to sit the entire remainder of the sitting without moving. I also noticed that in the following sitting I had the pain return but it was less and with each successive sitting it became more and more tolerable like the volume had been turned down. I had good sittings and bad ones after that but the progression was a steady decline in the amount I reacted to the pain, that is to say the pain was still there but didn’t cause me to real from the intensity.

One day 10 when we were finally allowed to speak again it sounded as though I was speaking through a megaphone. It felt almost uncomfortable to speak. Through after few hours it was returning to normal.

My whole experience didn’t seem like I had made to much of a shift in my outlook or perception till I got back into town and started walking around Hereford waiting for my train and I started to realize that I felt happy and open. I also could sense the tension created by all the distractions of walking down a main shopping street of a western town.

In a strange turn of events I ended up getting on the wrong train on my wait to Portland and ended up in Bristol. This wasn’t all that bad since I had met a friend Meilee up in Sheffield and she lives in Bristol. I was trying to get her to go to Portland so when I got on the wrong train and ended up in Bristol I just called her up. We went to the local climbing gym for the evening where she was meeting a friend that night. I bouldered and totally shattered myself.

I’m going to skip Portland now and head down to Dorset with Meilee for some deep water soloing (DWS).

London and Sheffield

I arrived on July 9th for a few short days in London at Audrey Seguey's place with Adrian Berry. Since I was still recovering from my ankle sprain the activity was kept to a minimum. We all went bouldering one day.

After four days of doing a lot of work on the net, Adrian Audrey and I drove up to Sheffield on Friday night. Adrian and Audrey were going into the cliffhanger bouldering competition.

We were up early the next day and out the door by 8 AM so Adrian and Audrey could get to the comp in good time. The competition was pretty amazing as there was a lot of people and tons of stalls there selling gear. They even had a snowboard ramp.

The day went by quickly and was helped by the sun shining. Unforetunately, Adrian had a bit of a power down and didn't make the finals but Audrey placed first and so we went out for Indian food to celebrate.

Audrey headed back to London quite early so that she could make work on Monday while Adrian took me out to Stanage for my introduction to Grit Stone climbing. I worked my way through a series of climbs going from Severe, Hard Severe, Very Hard Sever, then E1. After pumping out on the E1 called The Tippler I took a break. Adrian finished leading the route and we packed up as it started to drizzle.

Picture: Stanage Edge, popular section, Sheffield

Picture: Top of Stanage Edge looking back into the fern meadows.

My ankle was not great so I decided to cycle up to the hospital to get it checked out. They X-rayed it and found no breaks then gave me a referral to the hospital physio. The following morning on my way to the crag I called for an appointment and they said they could see me that day at 1PM. I jumped out of the car and walked back to Adrian's.

The physio commented that i was healing faster than he would have expected. The check my ligaments to see if any were torn and said I should do some exercises and stretching but not push it to the point of pain. Since i was going into the Vipassina 10-day course in two days it would be good to know what I should be doing to take care of it and if the sitting would cause further injury.

That night I went into the local bouldering gym called climbing works where I met a woman by the name of Meilee. She reminded me of someone from the gyms back home so I ask her if she had been in Van. It turned out that she was a good friend of Adrian's and they had lived together in Sheffield. We climbed for 4 hours in the gym doing the Font like circuits that they setup there and chatted.

We had a really good connection and since she was good friend with Adrian I invited her over for dinner. We ended up chatting most of the night away and talking climbing. We hung out a little the next day but she had to make her way back down to Bristol where she lives.

The following day I got packed up and readied myself for the Vipassina. I got up at 4:30 AM so that I could make the first bus and catch the train down to Hereford. I slept most of the train ride and caught a taxi to the Inn where the the bus to the course was picking people up.

I was rather early so I waited at the lodge and then two other guys who were going to the retreat turned up. Gaute from Norway and his friend (forgot name) from Liverpool. They offer me a ride and off we went. Next stop, Dhamma Dipa and 10-days of silence.