Vipassana - 10 days in Silence

I had no clue where I was getting into. I heard some stories during my travel from people who did it as well. 10 hours a day, 10 days in a row meditating and be in complete silence! No talking, reading, writing, music.. nothing! When I first heard from it I thought; this is for me! And now 2 years later I'm here. I expected myself to be a bit scared, but I'm just very excited.
The goal of the Vipassana is to learn "the art of living". How to life peacefully and harmoniously within oneself, and to generate peace and harmony for all others. I have no idea how I'll find that in the silence, but it's obvious that you need to experience it and can't learn it from a textbook.
The first two days where only about focusing on my resparating. How my breath is going in and out my nostrils. The third day was about feeling sensation in the area of my nose and upper lip. And the fourth day was feeling sensation on my upper lip and starting with the real technic of the Vipassana. So 40 hours of focusing at the area of my nose, just to get a sharp/detailed focus on any part of the body.
The first day I realised that I'm crazy, not because I'm doing this, but because of all the people in my mind. I saw that I was talking to at least 5 people, who where all imaginary. And "the real I" was sending them away, because I couldn't focus on my meditation with all these people around, as if the real I was the good one and the others the bad ones.. difficult to explain, but a good realisation. Second day was much better, my mind was wandering less and sitting with a straight back in the same position got better.
On the third day I got in this super deep meditation state, was completely in the moment and felt crazy sensations on my nose. Sensations so subtle I didn't knew they existed! My whole nose was tingling in a very nice and sensitive way. I thought this retraite is worth it already. I had no clue I could go so deep in myself.. and this was only the third day!!!!!

Every evening there was a discourse from Goenka, the guy who spread this teaching of Buddha around the world. Every day he was telling something about that day and what we would experience/practise the next one. On day three he explained the Vipassana technic.
The first days where to learn how to control the mind. The first day I noticed how much of a slave of my own mind I am. There was no way to choose when I want to use my mind and when not. It's not a tool anymore, it's controlling me, it completely took over.
Vipassana is all about learning how to be good with everything what is. If something is great and I want it to stay like this I start craving, if something feels bad and I want to get rid of it I start having aversions. In both ways I can create misery in my life, looking with fear to the future. Vipassana teaches that everything is impermanent. On a logical level I could understand it very easily, but to experience it is totally different. By doing a bodyscan over and over again I noticed that all the sensations where arising and passing away, the nice subtle sensation where passing away and so where the painful feelings. After sitting for one hour with a straight back without moving I can tell you there are some spots which hurt.
On day five I was in a good meditation state when I went inside of my body, as if I could look insight my body for knots/blokkades. In the right side of my chest I felt a big balloon like thing, my breathing was going up, almost to hyperventilating and I had no clue what to do. I wanted to see what it was, but looking at and trying to open it made it bigger, I had a reaction towards the knot which made it stronger. During ayahuasca I had the same, when I embrased it, it vanished. So I did the same here and it worked.
It feels so crazy that I'm able to go so deep insight my own body. Being completely at peace with myself creates that old blokkades arise to the surface and manifest themselves in my body as; pain, pulsations, tension, heat, cold etc.
During the bodyscans I encountered these sensations every time. Just looking at them in a objective way, so without craving or aversion towards the sensation, creates no resistance and gives no power to the blokkade. Because of this the blokkade will pass away one moment in the future, just have patience.
In my throat a big blokkade was formed from the sixth day on. Even though I knew that I needed to stay objective, I couldn't. I was hurting really badly it felt like 40kg pressing down in my throat all the way to my stomach. I was thinking; don't think that I want to get rid of it, of course where I focus on is what I create in my life. So the pain/tension/pressure got more and more. After two days I finally found a way to deal with it. In small pieces the pain got less and less. I also experienced a way how to scan my body from the inside, which was way more detailed and precise. I could feel where the source of the knot was, accurate on a mm. Still getting excited about how detailed I could feel every part of my body. This day was by far the hardest of the whole retraite. Finally I knew how to deal with it.
Afterwards my whole body was full with very nice vibrations, I was fully present with both my arms at the same time. I could feel every part at the same time. And then my legs, arms and my legs. And finally I could feel my whole body at the same time, it was such a crazy feeling to be so present with myself. I saw myself sitting from a distance, with all the sensations covering my body. I read about these things and I always expected that it was only possible for yogi's who where meditating for years and years to get to this point!!
Then I understood that this feeling was also passing away eventually. And that is oké.
I was a bit scared that I would stay with the knot in my throat and that it would be difficult in daily life. The last days a new blokkade came to the surface, this time I experienced it as a plant which was growing on my back. Next to my spine at both sides on the lower part of my back. Two sources of energy, they where radiating a lot of heat, from there branches started growing all over my back, where they crossed each other there was a pulsating hot knot/point. The last day it grew bigger and bigger tangling around my arms and finally every branch attached itself on my fingertips. Some other branches went around my left side and attached itself on my solar plexus. This one will probably take a while to get through.. I have just no words for this experience. It's magic mushrooms but then sober and real! Or is it not real? I think it is, I'm sure I didn't make it up. At least the pain did feel quite real.

During this whole 10 days I was wondering if everybody was going so deep. And guess what!! Everybody did go so deep. Not in the same way, some people got completely stuck in their mind and didn't experience any sensation. One guy was thinking about zombies for a full day, really.. not joking
Another guy made up his top 3 of most beautiful girls, but he just needed a real break from his busy working life.
It looked like everybody got exactly what they needed to learn at this point of their life.

Talking again was so strange, just feeling the vibrations through my body with every word I said. Then we noticed how warm we got because of the talking and looking around and stuff. And at 17h we where all really hungry, last 10 days we didn't even had dinner and I wasn't hungry at all.

So this whole experience was crazy, it's hard to tell what I will do differently in daily life now. Time will tell I guess. I'm sure I'm going to do another one this travel, I had a lot of fun and learned so much.
Excepting the reality as it is, not how I would like it to be, but just as it naturally comes. That's one of the things I experienced. And when you experience something it changes you deep insight, it's something that will be there for rest of my lifes

Namasta
I greet the devine within you