Could you survive for 10 days without talking? Without your phone? Without your watch? Fasting from 11 am onwards? Without any music or books to entertain you? Well… this is the story of what I learned from doing just that.

I talk. I talk a lot… when I feel comfortable with someone I can talk forrrrr…. Forever. I love to talk and I have been told many times that I talk too much! This is why when I told my friends and family that I was attending a 10-day retreat where you aren’t allowed to say a single word the entire time, I was met with some puzzled faces and inquisitive responses. Most responses were people trying to wrap their heads around the whole concept in total disbelief that I would voluntarily attend what sounds like a prison camp. The conversation went a bit like this; “well….. it’s not just that you can’t talk… you also can’t have your phone, you don’t have a watch so you never know the time, you have to eat entirely vegan, you can only eat breakfast and lunch and have to fast from 11 am until 7 am the next day. You also can’t journal or read any books nor can you listen to music to keep yourself occupied and lastly you can’t look at anybody else. Nonverbal communication still counts as communication.” I’m met with dead silence followed by “umm… well… what do you do all day?”

Meditation.

Each day you wake up at 4 am and you don’t go to sleep until 10:00 pm, the entire day is spent meditating.

Here is the schedule we followed: (more on this later)

Make it stand out

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Why on earth would someone want to spend this many hours meditating and who the hell has 10 days spare to put themselves through this type of torture you might ask. Well, for me, the seed was planted years ago after reading Jesse Itzler’s book ‘Living with the Monks and Jay Shetty’s book ‘Think Like a Monk.’ Both of whom are multi-millionaires and they managed to find time to learn and TRUELY learn the power of meditation through living at a monastery. To me, it sounded like a challenge and I love a challenge. I was curious, inspired and oddly excited to delve into learning about Buddhism and meditation.

I was naive going into this retreat, I thought I’d have the majority of the day to think about whatever I wanted and then set times where I would have to sit and meditate. I was more concerned about how I would manage to sit cross-legged on the floor for majority of the day than I was about how I would manage to concentrate and meditate for that many hours. I kept saying to myself “That’s a future Lucy problem… she can figure it out when she’s there.” I use this a lot, labelling myself as a past present or future version of myself to help to keep me in the present. I got this stoic idea from none other than the TV show ‘How I Met Your Mother.’ Marshal and Ted the main characters have a big issue they need to solve but they have a week to decide and instead of making the decision early they say “Let’s let future Marshal and future Ted decide” and go back to playing their video game. By delegating future mental tasks to an imaginary future me it clears up space in my brain to worry about things that only matter in the present. Isn’t it funny the places you pick up nuggets of wisdom from…

Anyway! My expectations were far from the reality of what the retreat would be like. The retreat was led by a Monk called Anthony, who has lived the majority of his life as a monk and has now created a retreat centre on the island of Koh Phangan in Thailand. Here he teaches the wisdom learned during his practice and creates a space to teach and host vipassana retreats. Yep, that’s right, the famous full-moon party island… Of all the places in the world to do a Vipassana retreat I’m sure Koh Phangan doesn’t spring to mind for many. As someone that only drinks on a rare occasion, I had never planned on visiting this island but when my visa was on its last few days I rushed over as it was the closest embassy to renew it.

Now, I’ll give it to Anthony… the man knows how to work a crowd and It’s a tough gig speaking to a room of (in our case) 40 people who can’t talk back. He would speak twice a day, in two one-hour sessions about Buddhism and the vipassana practice. I was engaged, fascinated and in complete awe of what I was hearing and to Anthony’s credit I believe the main reason was his delivery and public speaking skills.

Note: most images have been taken from the retreat website as I didn’t have my phone or camera. This is the meditation hall.

During Vipassana, you must follow the Eight Precepts, which are:

I undertake the training rule to refrain from killing any beings. (you eat all vegan food, you cannot kill any bugs, animals etc)
I undertake the training rule to refrain from taking what is not given. (no stealing)
I undertake the training rule to refrain from sexual intercourse.
I undertake the training rule to refrain from false speech. (no lying)
I undertake the training rule to refrain from intoxicants that reduce mindfulness. (no drugs or alcohol)
I undertake the training rule to refrain from taking solid food after midday. (must fast after lunch)
I undertake the training rule to refrain from dancing, singing, listening to music, watching shows, and from using garlands, perfumes, cosmetics, adornments and ornaments.
I undertake the training rule to refrain from using high and luxurious seats or beds.

You must also follow some subsequent rules for the 10 days, these are:

No use of your phone
No watches (this can distract you during meditation)
No journalling (you can take notes during the teachings but must leave your notebook in the meditation hall and cannot journal other thoughts)
No leaving the retreat once you have committed to staying the 10 days on day 1.
No speaking
No non-verbal forms of communication, note writing, sign language, thumbs up etc
Males and Females sit separately when eating and in the meditation hall
No exercise (cannot leave the grounds to go for a run or do a workout outside but can do a bodyweight workout or yoga inside your bungalow)

Anthony had followed the eight Precepts for periods of up to six months straight. He told us stories of his time living in the monastery with the other monks and how at the end of their last meditation before bed he would linger around slowly cleaning his meditation mat until everyone had left the hall and would sit back down so he could continue meditating through the night! He would perch himself in the corner for a few hours to sleep and then wake up before everyone else to meditate again early in the morning before the first scheduled session. Wow. Part of me was so jealous of him, that he had found something in this world that he enjoys so much and that he gets to do every single day whilst remaining excited to wake up the next day and do it all over again.

Now, you might be thinking… I’m confused… he spends a few hours sleeping? Isn’t meditation kind of just like sleeping anyway?? Well, I’m not at all embarrassed to admit that I once thought meditation was just a method of falling asleep. I’m sure someone people reading this will be doing the world’s biggest eye roll “She knows nothing about meditation at all and decided to do the ultra-marathon of meditation without ANY experience.” Well, boy did I learn a lot during this experience.

So because I didn’t know anything about meditation, my current knowledge of meditation is pretty much everything the Monk taught me, I was a blank canvas with no bad habits to undo and no systems to unlearn. (See there are some benefits to being naive!) Now I won’t go into the details of the meditation because I want to allow you to experience it first-hand yourself and to go into the retreat without any expectations.

The first few days I was engaged, I would bounce out of bed at 4:30 am excited for the day (the second half was a lot more difficult). Now I did exaggerate slightly, our day wasn’t ALL meditation… but at the same time… it was. Let me explain… we each got given a chore to do, these ranged from cleaning the meditation hall, emptying bins, cleaning the dining area, and cleaning the toilets but I got the holy grail of jobs which wassssssss….. raking the leaves in the garden, jackpot! I spent 30ish minutes each morning soaking up the sunshine peacefully raking the leaves and thinking about how grateful I am that I’m not cleaning toilets. There was a list posted on a pin-up board telling us which job was ours, but that’s all, they didn’t tell us how to do our jobs so on day one I looked around the yard and saw that other people were already getting to work with their rakes but I was confused, where did they find the rakes? I spent 15 minutes aimlessly walking around the grounds looking for where the rakes are kept, “where the fuck are they!” I started to get annoyed, this is such a simple thing, It would take me 2 seconds to ask someone and for them to point me in the right direction but nooo we have to be silent. Gahh, I’m not used to this at all. Once I finally found the rakes I realised I didn’t know what to do with the leaves I had collected, where is the bin? Do I carry them with my bare hands to the bin? Is there a smaller bin I can fill to take them to the big bin? Hmmm no one’s looking so I’ll just flick all the leaves under this bush instead.

It was quite a humourous sight to watch the yard filled with people raking leaves in painfully slow motions. I felt like I was in an insane asylum more times than I’d like to admit. The other meditators quickly slipped into this zombie-like state taking every step with intention, every movement with intention and living completely in the present moment. This took me a while to get used to, I was also moving around like a zombie following everyone else’s lead, not wanting to stand out. This slow zombie life was a real test of my patience as during the first two days when my body was not yet used to fasting I would be standing in line to get my breakfast feeling like I could not wait a moment longer to eat something (our last meal being 11 am the day before.) But there was absolutely no rush for anyone else, someone would slowly stir the bowl of porridge, take a moment to smell the steam, ever so slowly and carefully scoop a portion into their bowl and then slowly with so much care place the spoon back into the bowl. They would then hold their warm bowl, close their eyes and take a breath, then gradually take a step to the fruit station and repeat the process. Then the next person in line would do the same thing… I wanted to howl with laughter, this is comically slow! Lets get this show on the road! After a few days I got used to it and I couldn’t care less. I am a novice and these people are serious meditators so perhaps I could learn something from taking the slow lane like they are.. and I did.

Now, while we are doing these chores and eating our two meals a day we were actually meditating during this time too, we were ‘labelling’ our thoughts as they came in only focusing on the present moment. If a thought about something else pops up you simply give it a label and that’s it, you don’t engage with it once it has a label. I found this labelling method to be AMAZING. The way I had always heard of meditation was if a thought comes in just acknowledge it and let it pass, this never made sense to me even though it’s the same thing. Having it explained by the monk was what made all the difference.

Now this is extremely simple, instead of something like smelling food and the smell triggering a memory that transports you back in time to a beautiful dinner where your friend had spent hours cooking your favourite dish whilst dancing around the kitchen. Instead, it’s just the smell of food. (Whilst reminiscing and letting your mind go down that rabbit hole is also fun that’s not what we are trying to do, we are giving the brain a break.) But this simple, ever so simple little trick can mean the difference between a full spiral of emotions and simply just acknowledging you are experiencing something and letting it wash over you. Often anxiety is caused by that spiral of emotions and is triggered by something, I found this to be useful to stop that spiral. It also works as a good way to pull yourself out of a spiral, instead of focusing on all the thoughts you bring it right back to basics, what sounds can I hear, what part of my body is subconsciously tensed right now, am I cold or am I warm, is the breeze hitting my face or the warmth of the sun. If I got absolutely nothing else out of the 10 days except this skill I think it was worth my time.

It was super hot in Thailand, I was sharing a bungalow with one other woman and when I first arrived, I thought “Wow, how lucky are we that we get a fan!” only to realise the powerpoint to plug the fan’s 1-meter cord was on the roof. Why would they have installed a PowerPoint on the roof? I was confused. The fan sitting there unable to turn on was teasing me as I was bored, staring at the wall with sweat dripping down my face. Later that night I opened the door to see a long extension cord running from the ceiling to the floor and the fan blowing. I excitedly turned to look at the lady I was sharing the room with, only to be greeted by a naked man. I was in shock, I turned to look at the number on the door, which is when I realised I had walked into the wrong bungalow by mistake! I probably should have broken my silence to apologise to this man but instead, I just covered my mouth in shock and swiftly walked out, closing the door behind me. I walked back towards the correct bungalow, laughing to myself thinking that poor man must be so confused. When I arrived back at my bungalow, the unusable fan was sitting there as I had left it.

When I first left the retreat and even during the retreat, I genuinely believed that I had gained zero value from it, I laughed and mocked it with friends afterwards saying I’ll never do it again and wouldn’t recommend anyone needs to do a full 10 days and that 3 or 4 days would’ve been plenty. But slowly as I had to tackle the ups and downs of life I noticed all these new tools in my mental tool kit and I realised the depth of what I had learned and how to use it in the real world. Even now I am writing this almost 7 months after the retreat because I think about how grateful I am to have had the opportunity to experience this rare and unique meditation boot camp in the forest of Thailand.

Being stripped of everything that connects you to the world we have created leaves room for you to form your own opinions on life. Even the simpler things like not having access to a clock for 10 days made me think deeply about time. The monk would ring a gong to wake us up and to let us know our meditation had started and that lunch was ready etc. If you lost track of how many times the gong had been rung during the day you wouldn’t know what time it was. Or if you couldn’t sleep and were lying awake in the dark you didn’t know if it was only 5 minutes until time to wake up or if you’d only been asleep for an hour.

Not having any access to your phone for that long would probably send a lot of people crazy too… a lot can happen in 10 days! Has a war broken out that I don’t know about? Has a family member passed away? Has someone hacked into my bank account and stolen all my money? You could spend hours thinking of ways to make yourself anxious if you let your monkey mind take over. I knew this type of anxiety would be an issue for me and luckily I had a friend who lived nearby so I gave my parents their number and instructed the friend to physically come and tell me if something crazy was happening. I knew that unless my friend was there in front of me everything was fine in the outside world.

I said I was engaged for the first few days, but after a while, my mind started to wander. I would look around the room at the 40 other people sharing the same experience and think, I wonder what country they are from? How old is she? How do all these people have so much free time to be here right now? There was a packet of peanuts in the bin in the bathroom so which one of you has been sneaking snacks instead of fasting? I would sit and wonder about these people’s lives, what has brought them here? what have they been through? what are their dreams? I wonder if anyone’s sitting here wondering what I’m thinking about!

At the end of the retreat I had the opportunity to talk to the other people there, we went out for breakfast and exchanged stories about our experience. It was fascinating to properly talk to someone after watching them for 10 days and wondering about them. It was weird to say “What’s your name” to someone you’ve been sitting next to or sharing a room with. It’s interesting to look at someone and think they will sound a certain way and then hear their voice for the first time and it’s completely different to anything you imagined. It’s crazy the connection you have with these people you’ve never actually spoken to.

Now, 7 months later here are the most important lessons I have taken away from the 10 days:

Expectations are the thief of joy

I often spend time fantasising about how things will work out instead of just letting them happen. Going into different opportunities, friendships and countries with no expectations leaves room for amazing things to happen, when you try to control this you often end up disappointed.

2. Judgement

Judging someone is only wasting your own energy, the person you are judging is literally just existing. They aren’t affected by your thoughts only you are so if you are choosing to waste time and mental energy judging someone else then it’s only harming yourself.

3. You aren’t in control of anything, only the way you react to it

The only thing you can control is your reaction to any event or circumstance. It’s easy to let something ruin your day or send you into a spiral but you are in charge of that.

4. You need to constantly remind yourself of these lessons to be able to put them into practice

I’m not perfect, I need to consistently check in with how my brain is processing my emotions and remind myself of these lessons. It doesn’t come without making the effort every day.

5. Our bodies are taking in so much stimulus every day, it’s important to take a minute to reset

Entering back into the world after having such a peaceful 10 days opened my eyes to just how much our brain is processing every day and how our body holds onto stress without us even realising it. It’s so important to take time every day to just be in the present moment.

6. Be grateful for the little things

I felt so grateful for my freedom when I left the retreat, being able to choose what time of day I could eat, what I could eat, being able to listen to music, and being able to choose what I could wear. Everything I had been taking for granted all these years. I am so lucky to be healthy, and I remind myself of these small things every day.

Thank you for reading :)

Lessons From 10 Days of Silence

The Monks of Luang Prabang