What is Vipassana?
Vipassana is translated from Sanskrit as "insight meditation", is one of the areas of Buddhism and has a number of branches. The most popular applied method for today are 10-day courses of Vipassana by Goenka. The participants of these courses can be taught different methods of meditation: anapana (watching the breath), Vipassana (watching the sensations of his own body) and Metta (empathy and kindness).
In total, students meditate for 10 hours a day: 4: 00 am to 9-00 PM and perfect score at the end of the course is the ability to recognize the sensations of your body as something constantly changing.
How and where you can learn Vipassana?
Around the world there are centers that accept free all those who want to take this course of meditation. To get to the course pretty simple: you go to the official international website dedicated to Vipassana, choose the country and the city in which you prefer to engage in this practice, fill out the electronic application form, and within two weeks you should come back. If the course is complete, you will be prompted to sign up for another later, if you joined the list, in addition to confirmation of your application, you will be prompted to get acquainted with a number of simple rules.
During the course you can not use the communication tools: the computer, mobile phone and others, you can not smoke, drink alcoholic beverages and use drugs, not to bring and not to eat "their" food, not read, not write, not to meet eyes with the other course participants and not to talk for 9 days. Discipline was quite severe, as the schedule of meditation, but very few violations. Yet it is not summer camp, and the people who go to Vipassana understand why they need it.
Giving Vipassana?
In fact, it is impossible to determine exactly what it can give silent "insight meditation" - for each person the outcome is very individual. However, some similarities are still there: the course of the past people say that for them was a revelation to hear what the "noise" inside them.
During intense meditation, strict discipline and daily routine organized so that even in the group of people left to themselves, there is an opportunity to look into our hearts and minds and to perform all those things which in ordinary life are suppressed by mechanisms of denial and hiding is very deep and interfere with life.