“If there is no peace in the minds of individuals, how can there be peace in the world? Make peace in your own mind first.” ~S. N. Goenka
I recently completed my third Vipassana meditation course.
There is a moment at the beginning of the course when you surrender your phone (and receive it back at the end). That transition feels deeply symbolic. The outer world goes quiet, not all at once, but unmistakably. And only then do you realize how much static you’ve been carrying.
I never want it back at the end. Never.
Ten days with no phone. No books. No journaling. No eye contact. No conversation. No external input at all.
It’s a rare kind of devotion in a world that thrives on distraction. Not an escape from life, but a turning toward it—without buffers, without numbing, without the usual exits.
As my third course, I went in genuinely curious how it would meet me this time. I’ve just come through one of the most significant seasons of my life—a season of shedding, reorientation, and deep internal reckoning. I wondered if the experience would feel familiar… or entirely new.
The structure is always the same. Wake-up bell at 4:00 a.m. Meditation from 4:30 a.m. until 9:00 p.m.—about ten hours a day. Breakfast at 6:30: simple oats and fruit. Lunch at 11:00L nourishing, vegetarian, and honestly delicious. Then fasting until the next morning (new students receive fruit at teatime; old students do not).
I never felt hungry. An empty stomach is surprisingly conducive to meditation, and when you’re sitting most of the day, your body doesn’t need much.
Each evening, we watch a discourse taught by S.N. Goenka—a Burmese businessman turned meditation teacher who brought Vipassana to the West and established hundreds of centers worldwide. Though he passed more than a decade ago, his voice still guides every course. The instructions, the teachings, the humor—unchanged.
I love the purity of that. The technique hasn’t been personalized or diluted. It remains universal. Timeless. Intact.
What Vipassana Actually Is
Vipassana is an embodied meditation practice rooted in direct sensation.
You move your awareness systematically through the physical body, observing sensations exactly as they are—pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral—without craving what feels good or resisting what feels uncomfortable.
This is how the mind is purified at its deepest layer. Not through thinking. Through sensation.
We are practicing equanimity. Non-reaction. Peace in the midst of experience.
And this is how we learn not to react in our lives outside the meditation hall.
As you sit long enough, the body stops feeling solid. Science tells us we are made of trillions of subatomic particles, and Vipassana makes that experiential. I knew my hands were folded in my lap, but I couldn’t feel them. At times, my body felt as though it disappeared entirely.
Seeing What’s Actually There
Vipassana doesn’t just show you transcendence.
It shows you everything.
You get a front-row seat to your inner world, with no escape. And when there’s nowhere to go, what’s inside comes forward—whether you like it or not.
Then there was my inner shit-disturber. Very much alive.
No one smiles. No one makes eye contact. There are rules for everything. Silence. Stillness. Structure. And my mischievous part had a field day.
I imagined flicking people’s ears in the meditation hall. Pushing someone into the snow outside. Stealing a woman’s carrot cake when she walked away for tea and pretending nothing happened.
It kept me entertained. And oddly… regulated.
There were also long stretches of total distraction.
I wrote an entire book in my head. Remembered every person from elementary school—siblings included. Replayed my entire student-teaching placement. Planned future conversations. Solved problems that didn’t need solving.
And then there was the harder seeing.
My ego, fully on display. Greed. Judgment. Selfishness. Lack of tolerance.
The kinds of things we don’t like to admit live inside us.
But here’s the truth I trust deeply now: we cannot change what we refuse to see.
Vipassana doesn’t ask you to fix these parts. It asks you to notice them. To stop pretending they aren’t there. To meet them with awareness instead of shame.
And in that seeing—steady, non-reactive, honest—something begins to soften.
Why Understanding Isn’t Enough
We don’t suffer because we don’t understand. We suffer because we react.
We react in craving—wanting more and more of what feels good, chasing pleasure, grasping for certainty, comfort, affirmation.
And we react in aversion—resisting what feels uncomfortable, avoiding pain, numbing what we don’t want to feel, tightening against dis-ease.
This constant push and pull—toward what we want and away from what we don’t—keeps us restless. Agitated. Never quite at peace.
Mindset work eventually hits a ceiling because we are so much more than our mind.
We have a body. A nervous system. A soul. A lineage. A history carried in our tissues.
And don’t get me wrong—I love understanding. I’m obsessed with it. Understanding myself, others, the world. But understanding has its limits.
Nothing changes just because we know more.
Vipassana teaches something radically different: the middle way. Not suppression. Not indulgence. But presence.
It gives us space. Peace. Choice. An embodied way to practice not reacting. To experience life as it is, without being yanked around by desire or fear.
This is the true essence of peace.
Meeting the Shadow (and the Burper)
Case in point: the woman sitting directly behind me.
On day one, I noticed she had a burping issue. I thought, surely this is just today. It was not. For ten days straight, I had a front-row seat to her digestive system—gurgles, gas bubbles, belches during every single sit.
Clearly, she was uncomfortable. Clearly, her body was struggling.
And yet… my reaction shocked me.
I didn’t feel mild irritation. I saw myself smothering her with a pillow. I wrote vicious mental notes. I felt rage—pure, unfiltered intolerance.
I remember thinking, That’s inside of me??
Then there was the quiet competitiveness of meditators.
A woman sat beside me—calm, still, seemingly unbothered. In my mind, I made her a saint. Look at her, I thought. So equanimous. And here I am, a total asshole.
I’d sneak a peek (we’re meant to keep our eyes closed). She looked peaceful. Untouched. I wished I was more like her.
On day ten, when silence lifted and we could finally speak, I asked her how she dealt with it.
She laughed. She was going bananas too.
I went to the teacher on day eight to ask how to work with it. She went on day seven.
There’s a strange intimacy that forms when you suffer silently together. You meditate beside the same people. Eat beside them. Share bathrooms and silence and space.
You’ve never spoken—and yet you feel bonded.
You feel like you know each other. Because, in some way, you do.
Sitting With Pain, Learning Impermanence
Vipassana challenges you.
After each course, I declare it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And yet, I leave elated, clear, deeply myself—and certain I’ll return.
It’s not hard for the reasons people assume. Not the 4 a.m. wake-ups. Not the silence. Not even the fasting.
It’s hard because you sit with yourself. Your mind. Your pain. And you don’t turn away.
For seven days, I sat with a dense mass of tension along the right side of my back—creeping into my shoulder, along my ribs, down to the base of my rib cage. Throbbing. Aching. Persistent.
The instruction was simple: observe. No stories. No fixing. No resisting.
On the eighth day, the sensation vanished.
Gone.
What had once taken up so much space simply dissolved. There was room again—room for energy to move, for ease to return.
Vipassana teaches impermanence—not as a concept, but as lived truth.
Everything is always changing. Sensations arise. They pass. Again and again.
Pain is not fixed. Pleasure is not permanent. Nothing stays.
Seeing this experientially changes how we relate to everything.
Equanimous witnessing is deeply healing. Mental and physical pain move through the body and mind—without analysis, without therapy, without effort.
We are not fixing ourselves. We are learning to stay.
And in staying—steadily, patiently, without reaction—something profound unwinds.
This Is Not a Retreat
I had to stop calling Vipassana a retreat.
There are no hammocks. No umbrella drinks. No beach novels. This is a course.
And you come to work.
If you want comfort, this isn’t it. If you want transcendence without discomfort, this isn’t it. If you want to bypass your humanity, this will disappoint you.
And yet, the course is offered freely. Entirely run on service. Old students volunteer their time. Donations from those who’ve benefited keep the centers running. There are over 250 permanent centers worldwide, all run the same way.
Non-religious. Non-sectarian. Universal.
After the Silence
The real practice begins after you leave.
You don’t walk out enlightened. You walk out steadier.
I noticed how I related differently to pain, desire, and irritation. The greed I saw in myself softened me—and moved me toward generosity. Not as an idea, but as action.
In the weeks that followed, I bought a meal for a man who asked for help—something I would have previously avoided. I reorganized an offer in my work to include donations to a local food bank. I signed up to volunteer.
Vipassana didn’t make me think about these things more. It made it time to do them.
At a family gathering, I found myself with someone who has triggered me most of my life. This time, I didn’t react. I felt more compassion. Even love.
No big conversation. No confrontation. Just the ability to be different in their presence.
Enlightenment is a worthy goal. I hope we all get there—whether in this lifetime or another.
But perhaps we can also settle for more love, not less. A quieter nervous system. A little more space. A little less reactivity. A little more kindness toward what arises.
Sometimes peace doesn’t arrive as fireworks. Sometimes it arrives as the absence of reaction.
And from there, everything changes.
About Andrea Tessier
Andrea Tessier is an author, Self Trust Coach and Internal Family Systems (IFS) Practitioner who helps ambitious, high-achieving women build self-trust, release perfectionism, and step into authentic leadership. With over six years of experience blending psychology and spirituality, she guides clients to reconnect with their true Self and live with clarity, peace, and wholeness. Download her free Self Trust at a Crossroads Guide.
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