10 Days Vipassana Silent Meditation Retreat: What It Is And Why I'm Doing It
Feb 14, 2023
The world is moving too fast, and everything seems too hectic. Yanet Borrego wants to break the busy cycle and take some time off through a Vipassana Silent Meditation Retreat. In this episode, she shares why she is doing this transformative experience to take a pause and escape the overwhelming world even for just for ten days. Yanet acknowledges that this kind of trip can be somewhat challenging because we are all creatures of habit, but breaking the pattern is much more important than that.
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10 Days Vipassana Silent Meditation Retreat: What It Is And Why I'm Doing It
In this episode, I'm very excited because I'm going to talk about my upcoming Ten Days Silent Meditation Retreat. When I say upcoming, it's January 25th, 2023. This episode will probably be published at the beginning of February, so a few weeks after I recorded this. I wanted to record an episode before the Ten-Day Silent Meditation experience and one after to see how they compare and also to take you with me through this journey.
Now, you might be thinking, “Ten days silent meditation retreat, what is that? How do you know about it? What is going on?” Let me give you some background information here. Since I graduated college back in 2012, that's when I started getting deeper into personal development, and a huge influence on that was my uncle.
If you have heard previous episodes, you'll know about my uncle. He passed away from cancer, and that was one of the reasons why I felt motivated to leave my nine years of a corporate career to transition to full-time entrepreneurship and step into my purpose and what I feel in full alignment with. I've been in personal development for a long time now but years ago, I was getting my hair done. The person who was doing my hair, my hairdresser, we were talking about meditation and personal development.
He mentioned this ten days silent meditation retreat. This was years ago and I fell in love with every single thing he said. He told me that was the most life-changing experience he has ever and because of that experience, he started his own hairdressing business. Now he goes back every year at least once to do the ten-day silent meditation retreat.
This person told me about this retreat. Years ago, I wanted to do it. I was in corporate. I had ten days of vacation, which is nothing. I was taking those ten days anyways to do a lot of my personal development training. I did Tony Robbins that way. I did the Joe Maxwell team coaching certification but, in that moment in my life, something changed.
I was starting to date who is my ex-boyfriend and I told him about this ten-day silent meditation experience. He was like, “You're going to take time off from your job to go to a place to be in silence. That doesn't make any sense.” I let myself be influenced by that comment, so I continued doing my personal development training but I didn't do the ten days.
This was one of these things that I didn't do it years ago but it kept popping up in my mind over and over. I say to my coaching clients, “If it pops up in your mind more than 3 or 5 times, you got to take action on it.” Years passed by, then in 2022, my husband and I tried getting into it. He got into the meditation retreat but I didn't get into it because, within the first hour of the registration opening, this fill up completely.
Two hours after they had opened, I went to the website. I was getting my registration ready and I realized that they were wait-listed already for the women. Instead of that, we went to Mexico, got engaged and went to one of my friend's weddings. It was an amazing alternative. Now, this 2023, I tried to be more proactive and the registration opened.
They have different classes and I'm going to provide more details in a couple of minutes. The registration opened the day of my birthday, November 11th, 2022. It opened at 6:00 AM. At 6:00 AM, I was there ready to click on that link and because I was super proactive, I got in. That was back in November 11th and the time has come my friend because the meditation retreat is coming up.
Vipassana Silent Meditation Retreat
That's the background of everything that has happened since those years when I first heard about this. Now, I have met many people who have gone through this meditation retreat. It's called Vipassana Silent Meditation because Vipassana is the Buddhist technique that you are taught during that retreat. You get to practice this technique for ten hours every single day. After the ten days, at that time, I would have done 100 hours of meditation. It’s literally ten hours of meditation every single day for ten days.
I joke with my friends that I better start seeing people's auras after those ten days or at least reading their thoughts. Who knows what's going to happen? There are so many famous people that have also gone through the Ten Days Vipassana Retreat. Have you heard of Yung Pueblo? He wrote Clarity & Connection and now his latest book is Lighter. I finished reading it. I highly recommended it.
Funny enough, he had a lot of trauma during his childhood. When he started healing, he decided to go to the Ten Days Vipassana Retreat and when he went, he realized the in-depth experience he had and he kept going. He kept going twice a year. He, later on, did a twenty-day silent meditation with Vipassana, the same organization.
I read in his book that he also did 30 days of silent meditation. These are 30 days when you don't have access to technology and a phone. You are in pure silence and it was because of this meditation technique, Vipassana, that he was inspired to write about his healing experience and also publish his book.
This has been a game-changer for him. The other person that did Vipassana was Dan Harris. Have you heard of the 10% Happier book? Dan Harris also has a very inspiring story. He says that, in the past, he was consuming a lot of drugs and he was also a TV reporter. One day, while he was reporting the news on TV live, he had a panic attack in the middle of everything.
That panic attack led him to go to this journey of healing. Where he started was the Ten Days Vipassana Retreat. Once he went through that experience and transformation, he fell in love with it and he kept going back once a year. I don't know if I'll go back once a year and at least, I want to try it once in my life, which starts soon.
There are many famous people who have done the Vipassana Ten-Day Silent Meditation Retreat and there are many peoples that I know who have gone through the experience and they have loved it. Now, was it easy? No, and they make sure to tell me that it's very challenging, which I understand because I can picture that in my mind.
Now, what is the Vipassana Silent Meditation Retreat? This is hosted or organized by an organization and the retreats are called Vipassana. If you go to the website, Dhamma.org, you'll be able to see the schedule and all the classes they give. They're international, so they have these classes all over the world, like New Zealand, India and Spain. You name it. They have a lot of different retreat locations in different parts of the United States.
The one I'm going to is Kaufman, Texas, which is close to Dallas. It's just four hours away from me, which is perfect because I don't have to spend a lot of time or money traveling there to go through a retreat. These retreats are also free. Do you hear me? People are like, “Are you serious?” They are free retreats. This is open to the public for free. The only thing that you need is to wake up early to make it to that registration because, as I mentioned before, it fills up in a matter of less than an hour, at least for women's group because they separate men from women.
The women's group fills up super quickly, so make sure to make it there. Vipassana is a teaching technique. People reference this retreat by calling it Vipassana. This organization, as I mentioned, is global and international. They have retreats all over the globe and it's a free retreat. For those ten days, you don't pay anything and you stay in the place for free. They give you vegetarian food, so you don't have to pay for the food.
You don't have to pay for anything. They are donation based. The cool thing about this organization is that they accept donations only from the people that have completed the ten days. If you leave in the middle of the retreat, day five for whatever reason and you want to donate because it was beneficial for you, they don't accept it because you haven't gotten the full benefit. It resonates so much with me because it speaks about the integrity of the process, the meditation technique, the organization overall and how they operate.
I was reading on the internet that everyone who helps with these retreats are students who are volunteering their time, money and everything. My understanding is that the funding for this organization to operate is based on student donations, which is cool. It is nice because this is a community that still keeps alive these retreats, which are for free. It's for the community.
Again, it's super cool. It seems to be this concept of decentralization. The model is the same but there is no central operating person of core instead all the past students maintain this organization, including the people who cook and do the logistics for this these ten days is a very cool concept. I explained the cost, the structure, how it operates and how to find it. Let's talk about the rules on the schedule.
There is no central operating person in Vipassana.
These are ten days of pure meditation. This is something pretty intense. At 4:00 AM, you start hearing the bell. That's how they wake you up. At 4:30 AM, you start meditating for 1 or 2 hours, then you have breakfast. When you first start your day, you can meditate in your room or in the hall with everyone else. I will be meditating in the hall with everyone else because I don't want to fall asleep by myself. That's how committed I am to the process.
At 4:30 AM, you meditate, then you have breakfast. You meditate more and more then you have lunch. Closer to the end of the day, you have a tea break. They give you tea and snacks in the schedule. I didn't see anything around dinner. In my episode after I've gone through the Ten-Day Silent Meditation Retreat, I'll fill you in all the details because I have no idea what to expect out of that tea break. Even if we don't have dinner, I'm totally fine. I'm there for the experience.
We have a tea break then every day, we have one hour of a teacher's discourse. A teacher's discourse is one hour of the teacher teaching you about mindfulness, yourself and the Vipassana meditation technique. After that, we meditate more and we go to bed at 9:00 PM. We go through the same schedule for the next nine days. All ten days, we follow the same schedule of waking up at 4:00 AM and going to bed at 9:00 PM.
I added up all the meditation hours and it's ten hours or super close to ten hours. Ten hours for each day of ten days, that is 100 just meditating. I'm so excited. People ask me, “Can you do yoga? Can you read? Can you write?” Nothing. You cannot read because that's considered a distraction. Not only that, even when you read, you are consuming someone else's input.
Silent Meditation Retreat
This Silent Meditation Retreat is all about tuning into the only input that matters and that you have control of, which is yours. When you think of, “Why am I doing this meditation retreat?” It's because it has been so hectic. Since I transitioned from corporate to full-time entrepreneurship, having a business is at another level. This is something I take seriously and I do the best I can every single day, so it can be hectic.
Also, my business has been growing, which is great. I've been hiring help but with all this process being implemented, it's like, “Go.” For weeks, excluding the weekend, I went to Las Vegas, and I've been working seven days 90% of the time. I can see in my mind and my body that I need to rest. I need to tune back into my own input, which is the purpose of these ten days. This is a system and a channel that I'm going to leverage for me to reset and restore.
The only purpose is, as I mentioned, to get to know myself better, tune into myself, and become aware of what are the things that I'm going through, even at the subconscious level. Here's the thing. I've had so many losses in my family. My immediate family, the closest family I have, excluding my mom, which lives with my husband and I, passed away in a few years. I also had a miscarriage. Cody's dad also passed away from COVID.
In the midst of this transition from corporate entrepreneurship, then all of those things have happened. Even though I've shown up every single day, ready to go, productive, going through the ups and downs of life because I'm a human being too, I am sure, at a deeper level, there is more release I need to do at the subconscious level when it comes to grieving all those losses that I've had in my life. I believe that whenever you're in silence and more if it's ten days back to back, a lot of things you haven't processed are going to bubble up.
Whenever you're in silence, many things you haven't processed will bubble up.
Now, that is my opportunity to face every single thing that is going through my subconscious programming. I'm just so excited because I know the work is going to be very healing, in-depth like I love things and transformational. Is it going to be easy? No. You cannot read. You cannot write. I don't have communication with anything. Social media is gone. I'm not going to be having my phone. I need to leave it in my car or with them.
There is no phone, no computer, no technology and no working. The only purpose every single day is to meditate, to turn inward and to connect to your own input, whatever that might be at that moment. I also read super interesting that you're not supposed to look at people's eyes to not distract yourself. Also, I can imagine to not communicating.
We Are Creatures Of Habits
After even five days of silence, you would be like, “I need to communicate with someone,” because that's what you're used to doing. Human beings are creatures of habits of repeating the same patterns, and this ten-day silent is a huge pattern that interrupts anyone's life. They don't allow you to look at people's eyes because the only thing they want you to do is to be with yourself. I love that I said be because in this world where there is so much doing energy, you wake up and you do. It’s always doing.
I'm so excited. I'm so looking forward to having these ten days to be able to be, like pure being energy tapping into that higher-level energy of creation because when you are in the present moment, there is a lot of uncertainty. You don't know what's happening in the present moment because you cannot predict it. Welcoming that uncertainty and starting to be more comfortable and aware of the present moment allows you to tap into your inner creativity which you already have. Those are the rules of that retreat. We need to make sure we are negative in terms of COIVD. We do a test before the retreat within twelve hours and in the middle of the retreat, we need to do another test to make sure everything is in order.
I explain why I want to do this. Let's talk about what I think is going to be hard, which I love. This is a lot of assumptions because I don't know what's going to happen. One of the things that concern me the most is my back. Usually, when I meditate, I have back support. I also got a meditation cushion from Amazon. When you're meditating on the floor, you don't have back support. On the floor, I mean sitting on the floor and not laying down, which is how most pro meditators do it.
They meditate on the floor, straight back but no back support. In general, we are not used to doing that. I know I'm not used to doing that, so I know the pain in the back. It is going to be a reminder of how challenging the journey could be at that moment. The silence I know is going to be challenging and I'm not concerned. I think I'm thirsty for that challenge of silence. I'm like, “I'm excited for being in silence for ten days,” and just being and resting. No reading. Only tuning into my own input.
Even though I say that, it will be probably challenging because I've never been one day in pure silence. It's going to be difficult, I know. I recognize that. The silence is one, the back. What I'm curious about also is the integration back into the usual world. You have been ten days in silence and you finish. Now you integrate into a world that is full of noise and of inputs. Whenever I record the episode after the ten days, I'm curious about what my experience is going to be.
Even integrating into all of the inputs we receive at all times is going to be super cool. Another question that I've gotten is, “Is this guided meditation?” No. This is silence. I was reading a couple of people on the internet who has described and documented their experiences. They mentioned that in the first three days of the retreat, the only thing they ask you is for you to focus on your breath in silence.
Thoughts are going to come up, things are going to bubble up in your veins and it’s okay. We are not enlightened yet. Rarely, we go a long amount of time in silence. We have to be realistic but honestly overall, I am excited because I've been meditating consistently for the most part since 2012. I think I'm ready for the challenge. It will be hard and in my mind, there is no plan B and I want to fully embrace this experience. I want to show up.
I want to follow every single thing about the technique. I cannot wait to come back after ten days and tell you about my experience, about if my assumptions were right, what were the hardest things that I went through, and what came up for me mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. What I love about this retreat and the idea of being ten days in silence is that it's going to touch me at the spiritual, mental, emotional and physical levels.
This works everything and you're also tapping into your consciousness. Your unconscious mind and your higher self for your intuition are. I'm very excited, to be honest with you. It's going to be super transformational. I've told my clients, which I love dearly, “Ten days, I'm out of the grid and when I come back, we'll resume the sessions.” This episode will continue to be released including my weekly newsletter.
I may schedule some posts in social media. I'm not sure yet. I'm thinking about it. It's so much to do before I disappear into the nothingness of silence. I'll keep you updated. If this is something that resonates with you, you need to check out the organization because it's a cool experience that it is free and it's for the community operated by the community in terms of finances and hours. It's interesting to see.
I cannot wait until I release the episode after my ten days of meditation experience. Thank you so much for tuning in. I appreciate you, your time and everything. If this was helpful, please remember to share it with your friends and family. We are here to support and empower each other because we all deserve to live the best life at the most aligned level we can. I'll see you in the next episode. Bye-bye.
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