Episode 8 — Twelve Days of Nowhere to Hide
I thought silence would be quiet.
That sounds obvious, doesn’t it?
Ten days of Vipassana. No phone. No talking. No eye contact. No writing. No music. No scrolling. No Netflix. No René. No little message to send the moment something rises in me.
Just me.
My breath.
My body.
And everything that had been waiting underneath the noise.
I think many of us imagine silence as peace. A soft blankness. A spiritual pause. A place where the mind becomes calm because the world has finally stopped talking.
But silence is not empty.
Silence is full.
Full of thoughts you did not know you were still carrying.
Full of memories that wait until you are still enough to hear them.
Full of old judgements.
Full of pain.
Full of longing.
Full of truth.
And perhaps most of all, silence removes all the little exits.
No phone to reach for.
No person to explain yourself to.
No music to regulate the mood.
No food outside the schedule.
No writing it down.
No eye contact to soften the awkwardness.
No story to immediately turn the experience into something useful.
Just observe.
That was the word that kept returning.
Observe.
I arrived with ideas about what Vipassana would be. I had imagined a detox of sorts — from social media, food, noise, distraction, attachment, constant thinking, constant reaching outward.
And yes, all of that was there.
But what I discovered was deeper.
Vipassana did not ask me to become someone else.
It asked me to stop running from what was already inside me.
Before I even arrived, the retreat had already started.
I was packing, preparing, overthinking, wondering what to bring. Would I be cold? Would I be uncomfortable? Would my body hold up? Would my ankle hurt? Would I need extra layers, loose clothing, a cloak, a blanket?
And as I packed, one question started moving through me:
Is this fear or love?
If it was love, I packed it.
If it was fear, I tried to leave it behind.
That alone was already a doorway.
By the time I arrived, something in me had already stepped away from ordinary life. René had felt it too. He later said that energetically, I had already left days before.
And then the real container began.
Phone handed in.
Men and women separated.
Room assigned.
Silence approaching.
I shared a room with a French woman. Before Noble Silence began, we had one simple, practical conversation about showers. She preferred evening. I preferred morning.
That tiny exchange became the foundation of our silent rhythm for the whole retreat.
Once the silence began, we could not speak, gesture, touch, communicate with our eyes, or give little signals of friendliness. And yet, we communicated.
A window opened after bathroom use.
An understanding about rhythm.
A quiet respect for space.
No words.
No drama.
Just two women living beside each other in silence.
That was one of the first things I learned:
silence does not remove communication.
It reveals the quality of it.
The schedule was relentless.
Wake-up gong at 4 a.m.
Meditation at 4:30.
Breakfast at 6:30.
More meditation.
Lunch at 11.
More meditation.
Tea break.
Evening discourse.
More meditation.
Lights out at 10.
And then again.
Gong.
Sit.
Breathe.
Eat.
Walk.
Toilet.
Sleep.
Repeat.
At some point, in my mind, it became very simple:
Eat. Sit. Shit. Sleep.
Not elegant.
But real.
And that was part of the medicine.
Life had been reduced to its barest rhythm. No performing. No proving. No “Shamna the coach.” No “Shamna building a business.” No “Shamna the partner.” No “Shamna with ideas.” No identity to polish.
Just this woman.
On a mat.
In a body.
With a mind that did not stop moving just because the room was silent.
Good heavens, the mind loves to travel.
Around day three or four, one line kept looping in my head: “Time goes by, so slowly.”
Madonna, of all people, became part of my Vipassana soundtrack.
And she was right.
Time did not pass in the usual way there. It stretched, softened, confronted, repeated.
Sometimes I was building retreats in my head.
Come back to the breath.
Sometimes I was thinking about René.
Come back to the breath.
Sometimes old colleagues appeared. Old judgements. Old rooms. Old versions of myself I had not thought about in years.
Come back to the breath.
Sometimes I fell asleep sitting upright.
Sometimes I nodded forward and jerked myself awake.
At one point, someone had to ask me to stop snoring.
Very spiritual.
Very human.
And that was important too.
Because somewhere in me still wanted to do Vipassana “properly.”
I had asked for a chair because of MS, fatigue and my physical reality. I had a mat and a chair, and I was grateful for both. But the chair made me sleepy. The mat made my back hurt.
So I kept adjusting.
Chair.
Mat.
Back support.
Cushions.
Blankets.
My little meditation territory slowly became mine.
And I began noticing how everyone had created their own small survival system. Cushions stacked in a certain way. Blankets folded just so. Stools. Supports. Corners.
Even when stripped down to almost nothing, the human being still creates a little world.
My spot.
My system.
My way to make this bearable.
And I say that with tenderness.
Because of course we do.
Then came the body scanning.
And this is where something in me recognised the work.
Moving attention through the body.
Not fixing.
Not analysing.
Not telling stories.
Just feeling.
Heat.
Cold.
Tingling.
Numbness.
Pain.
Pressure.
Itching.
Pulsing.
Nothing.
And when something hurt, the instruction was not to panic. Not to immediately move. Not to collapse into the story of it.
Just observe.
Stay equanimous.
Notice.
Move on.
The body speaks in sensation before the mind understands the language.
Sometimes the pain was clearly physical.
Sometimes it felt older than physical.
A stored judgement.
A remembered shame.
A small piece of past still lodged somewhere inside.
One memory came up of a woman from one of my early jobs. I saw her jacket. I remembered judging it at the time — a small, sharp, unnecessary judgement. And there it was, years later, in my body.
Not because she needed anything from me.
But because I had carried the vibration of that judgement in myself.
That was humbling.
And it happened more than once.
Old people.
Old jobs.
Old moments.
Old versions of me.
Again and again, something would rise.
And instead of turning it into a story, I could see it.
Feel it.
Let it soften.
Let it move.
Awareness itself became a form of release.
The word that kept returning was:
Anicca.
Changing.
Changing.
Changing.
Everything changes.
Pain changes.
Pleasure changes.
A craving changes.
A hot flush changes.
A mood changes.
A thought changes.
A self-image changes.
A story changes.
And if everything changes, then perhaps I do not have to grip so tightly.
There were many hot flushes.
I had been worried about being cold.
Instead, I met heat.
Heat rising through my body, filling me, sweating me, then passing. Again and again. Sometimes it felt connected to moments when I had drifted in thought and then caught myself. Almost like the body flushing out more than heat.
A thought.
A judgement.
A little “caught.”
Then heat.
Then change.
Anicca.
There was pain too.
And sometimes I would sit there with pain moving through my back, hips, knees, legs, feet, and I would realise how quickly the mind wants to turn sensation into identity.
This hurts.
I cannot do this.
My body is failing.
This is too much.
But then sensation would shift.
Not always disappear.
But shift.
And something in me understood again:
Pain is real.
But suffering grows when I make the pain into a story about who I am.
That distinction matters to me.
A lot.
Because I do not believe suffering is sacred just because it is suffering.
I believe awareness is sacred.
I believe compassion is sacred.
I believe the moment we stop fighting reality and start seeing it clearly — that is sacred.
There were parts of the teachings I questioned.
And I am glad I questioned them.
I did not go there to become a blind follower of anything.
I went there to experience.
To learn.
To receive what was true for me and leave what was not.
When teachings around suffering were shared, I felt my own truth respond. Yes, pain exists. Yes, discomfort exists. Yes, life brings experiences we would not consciously choose.
But suffering, to me, is not the same as pain.
Suffering is often what happens when we resist, identify, dramatise, cling, push away, judge, or make a sensation mean something permanent.
That is very different.
There were also teachings around not killing. No killing of insects. No taking life. I respect the intention. I respect the reverence.
And still, my mind asked questions.
What about plants?
What about vegetables?
What about intention?
What about gradations of life?
What about the way something is cared for?
I could feel that my truth did not want to simply repeat teachings because they were teachings.
And that felt clean to me.
Discernment is not rebellion.
Discernment is respect for truth.
For me, Vipassana was not about becoming Buddhist.
It was about meeting a practice honestly.
Letting it work on me.
Letting it show me myself.
And one of the things it showed me was unfinished love.
During the silence, someone from a previous deep transformational space came strongly into my awareness. Someone with whom I had once shared an intense process. Years ago, I had pulled away because I felt my energy being taken too much. I had felt myself being placed into a mother role, and I stepped back.
But in the silence, another layer appeared.
He had been going through a profound rebirth after that process.
And I realised I had left him hanging.
Not cruelly.
Not deliberately.
But I had.
Once I saw it, I knew there was something to complete.
After Vipassana, before fully returning home, I went to Consensual. Not for drama. Not to reopen a story. Not to become responsible for what was not mine.
But to say what needed to be said.
I love you.
I am sorry.
That moment matters to me.
Because sometimes healing is not only what happens on the meditation cushion.
Sometimes healing is what meditation makes you brave enough to do afterwards.
There was also the beauty of seva.
Service.
The volunteers who cooked, cleaned, organised, supported, held the container. Previous students giving their time so others could experience the retreat.
You do not pay upfront for Vipassana.
At the end, if you choose, you donate so the next person can receive the same opportunity.
That touched me deeply.
There was something very clean in it.
You receive.
Then, if it is true, you give.
Money.
Service.
Support.
Whatever is aligned.
It made me reflect on giving, receiving, business, service, purity, systems, money and spiritual work. Not as a final conclusion. More as something I could feel in my body.
The purity of service has a vibration.
And I felt it there.
There were also the silent relationships.
The dining hall.
My chosen seat facing the wooden wall, with a window on one side and the movement of women collecting food on the other. I sat there almost every day. The wood grain became its own strange world. Shapes appeared in it. Bodies. Symbols. Little private visions of meaning.
Behind me, women ate in silence.
Or tried to.
There was one Turkish woman whose pleasure in eating I quietly loved.
There was my roommate.
There were women whose names I did not know but whose energy I recognised by the way they walked.
There was coughing.
There were footsteps.
There were rhythms.
There was one woman whose name I knew because she had gone up to ask the teacher a question. Morgana. A beautiful name. A Celtic, witchy name. I noticed her often — her deliberate walk, dark flowing clothes, focused presence.
When the silence lifted, I felt a clear inner nudge.
So I asked her:
“Are you a witch?”
She laughed.
Not offended.
Recognised.
I said:
“When are you going to own it?”
That was not really about a label.
It was about seeing a woman already standing inside an energy she had not fully claimed out loud.
There was another woman who had fascinated me throughout the retreat. Colourful. Bright. Expressive. Drawing attention and then pretending she did not want attention. Revealing herself and hiding herself at the same time.
When the silence lifted, a conversation happened between us that went straight to the heart of something she had not fully owned yet.
The details are hers.
But the essence was this:
sometimes people are already showing us who they are, while still hoping nobody notices.
The next morning she passed me, looked directly at me and smiled.
Not embarrassed.
Grateful.
As though she understood that the question had not been judgement.
It had been permission.
That was something the silence revealed too.
Not only what I needed to release.
But how I see.
How I mirror.
How truth sometimes moves through me.
Not to expose.
Not to perform.
Not to be clever.
But to invite someone back to themselves.
And when the silence lifted fully, something else happened that surprised me.
Women came to me.
One woman rushed toward me and hugged me before remembering that touch was still not allowed. She wanted to thank me for my grounding energy. Another woman thanked me for my breath. She said it had supported her when she was struggling.
I had no idea.
No idea at all.
That moved me.
Because I had gone there to work on myself.
And without speaking, without coaching, without explaining anything, something in my presence had still served.
Sometimes your energy is helping before your words ever arrive.
That is something I am still taking in.
After the retreat, I did not rush home immediately.
I had booked myself a full day at Elaisa Wellness.
Seven hours.
Seven hours of warmth, water, sauna, massage, integration, and letting my body understand that silence was over.
That mattered.
Because after ten days of strictness, structure and observation, I did not want to throw myself straight back into ordinary life.
I wanted softness.
I wanted care.
I wanted the body to be included in the return.
And then, after Consensual, after completion, after that bridge between silence and life, I returned to René.
He was waiting.
And in a way, that sentence is enough.
Because throughout the retreat, René was present in me.
Not physically.
Not by phone.
Not through messages.
But in love.
My mind returned to him again and again. And what surprised me was not dramatic longing. It was gratitude.
Gratitude that this man is in my life.
Gratitude for how we live.
How we laugh.
How we travel.
How we discover.
How we hold each other.
The silence did not make me want to escape my life.
It made me see what in my life is precious.
That may be one of the deepest gifts.
I did not come out wanting to destroy everything and begin again.
I came out clearer about what matters.
The three words I brought home were:
Equanimity.
Wholesomeness.
Anicca.
Equanimity — learning not to react to every sensation, thought, craving, discomfort, fear or impulse.
Wholesomeness — feeling into what is clean, kind, aligned, and leaves the system lighter.
Anicca — remembering that everything changes.
Everything.
The pain.
The craving.
The heat.
The irritation.
The memory.
The desire.
The identity.
The story.
Even the silence.
So no, silence was not empty.
Silence was full.
Full of old memories.
Full of body sensation.
Full of boredom.
Full of truth.
Full of irritation.
Full of compassion.
Full of unfinished love.
Full of release.
Full of human beings trying, failing, adjusting, sitting, breathing, eating, walking, sleeping, starting again.
And maybe that is what I received most from those twelve days.
Not enlightenment.
Not perfection.
Not a personality upgrade.
But a deeper trust in witnessing.
A trust that I can sit with what arises and not immediately fix it.
That I can feel pain without becoming pain.
That I can see an old judgement without becoming a bad person.
That I can remember someone I hurt and choose repair.
That I can receive service and later give in my own way.
That I can question teachings and still honour the practice.
That I can be silent and still connected.
That I can be alone and still held.
I do not have to become someone else to be free.
I have to become willing to see what is already here.
That is what I carry home.
Into my body.
Into my relationship.
Into my work.
Into my coaching.
Into the retreats I dream of creating.
Into the way I want to help people listen to their body without making it wrong.
Into the way I want to help people release old stories without turning healing into punishment.
Because life will become noisy again.
The phone returns.
The messages return.
The renovations return.
The body asks for attention.
The world pulls.
But something in me has felt the space underneath it.
And that cannot be unfelt.
The silence did not ask me to disappear.
It asked me to stop running from what was already inside me.
And for that, I am grateful.
If something in this reflection feels familiar — the constant thinking, the self-judgement, the body holding old stories, the need to fix everything quickly, or the longing to finally understand what is happening underneath your patterns — my free 5 Human Clouds guide may be a gentle next doorway.
It helps you recognise the inner clouds that can block your clarity, energy and self-trust.
