Vipassana meditation: I'm 2 months in, but have Qs....

[PsiloPutty]

I've been doing ~40 minutes of Vipassana meditation a day for the past couple months (started with 20 mins) and I can already see that this is going to be a part of my life now. Given its hopeful permanence in my life, I want to do it correctly, which leads me to a few questions.

1) Let's say you're meditating and a thought about work pops into your mind, and it's a thought that stirs up a little twinge of panic. With Vipassana, are you supposed to:

       A) Whisper "feeling.....feeling" in your mind, wait for the thought/emotion to leave and then return to breath focus?

        or

      B) Whisper "feeling....feeling" in your mind, actually examine the emotion and label it (fear, dread, despair, etc) and then wait for it leave before returning to      breath focus?

 

2) Is it a bad idea to use the Vipassana technique to fall asleep at night? It does work for me, but if it's going to eventually interfere with my daytime meditation time by having my mind associate meditation with falling asleep, I obviously will stay away from doing it at night.

3) If I've been into my meditation for 20 minutes or so and become conscious that my posture has slouched some from my starting point and it eventually becomes a bit uncomfortable, should I keep coming back to the label of "feeling....feeling" when the back pain fires again, or should I just take 1 second to fix my posture?

Thank you for reading.   

Edited February 12, 2018 by PsiloPutty
Clarification....

[Adam M]

1) Do not orally say the labels...they are mental labels ... label exactly what you experience as accurately and as consistently as you can. Pay special attention to the fact that all perceptions come and go, do not satisfy you, and are not controlled by or happening to "you".

2) Vipassana is great for falling asleep (and for every part of the day). The goal is to label as consistently and as accurately as you can during your ordinary life and in meditation. 

3) You can fix your posture but remember to label "pain pain pain, intending to fix posture, fixing fixing fixing, relief relief relief"

 

Find a vipassana teacher near you and talk to them about your practice, vipassana may be a difficult practice without the guidance form a teacher at the beginning

 

Go on a retreat

 

I'm not a teacher, I just have been doing it for over a year now

 

[PsiloPutty]

Thanks, brother. 

Yes, I meant that I whisper the labels to myself in my mind, not aloud.

I do have a week-long Vipassana retreat scheduled in May and I'm looking forward to it, even though the thought of all that meditating is intimidating to me, mainly because it's still fairly foreign to me and I've never done more than 45 minutes a day. 

Thank you again for your time. It helped!   

[cirkussmile]

Thank you for making the world more peace ?

Continue practicing, go to a retreat and eventually all your questions will come to an end

[PsiloPutty]

It's my pleasure! I'm happy to have found it and given it a chance. 

[Space]

2 hours ago, PsiloPutty said:

I've been doing ~40 minutes of Vipassana meditation a day for the past couple months (started with 20 mins) and I can already see that this is going to be a part of my life now. Given its hopeful permanence in my life, I want to do it correctly, which leads me to a few questions.

1) Let's say you're meditating and a thought about work pops into your mind, and it's a thought that stirs up a little twinge of panic. With Vipassana, are you supposed to:

       A) Whisper "feeling.....feeling" to yourself, wait for the thought/emotion to leave and then return to breath focus?

        or

      B) Whisper "feeling....feeling" to yourself, actually examine the emotion and label it (fear, dread, despair, etc) and then wait for it leave before returning to      breath focus?

 

2) Is it a bad idea to use the Vipassana technique to fall asleep at night? It does work for me, but if it's going to eventually interfere with my daytime meditation time by having my mind associate meditation with falling asleep, I obviously will stay away from doing it at night.

3) If I've been into my meditation for 20 minutes or so and become conscious that my posture has slouched some from my starting point and it eventually becomes a bit uncomfortable, should I keep coming back to the label of "feeling....feeling" when the back pain fires again, or should I just take 1 second to fix my posture?

Thank you for reading.   

1) Well i'd say as long as you notice both the thought and the feeling it doesn't matter. The noticing or acknowledging part is what is important, rather than examining it. Labelling is optional, but obviously helps reinforce the noticing, and keeps you focused and concentrated. You also want to be labelling both the thought and the feeling. They are separate experiences. In terms of the actual words used, you can use either simple words like 'feeling', or you can get more specific and use words like 'fear', 'dread', etc, as you say. Different teachers advise different approaches. Don't get too caught up in the label though. The majority of your focus should go into noticing experience. In response to one of the other comments here, you absolutely can actually whisper the label physically, as opposed to just saying it in your mind. Shinzen Young advocates this if you find your concentration is low. I find it's very effective and usually start out by quietly whispering the labels with my mouth. If you've got good concentration though you can just say them mentally. 

2) Not sure on this one. You want to be focused and alert when you're meditating so i'm not sure that doing it right before bed is the best idea. But if it works for you then go for it. My guess is that it wouldn't affect your day time meditation, but can't say for sure.

3)  You can fix your posture, thats fine. But it's important to be mindful of the whole process. Note the sensation pain, note the thoughts that arise with that, note the desire to move or the aversion to the discomfort (basically the same thing) this is very important, note any resistance to the discomfort, note the intention to move, note the sensations of moving, note the emotional state of reducing the pain etc. 

[PsiloPutty]

Space, thank you so much for using your time to help me. I'm now getting a sharper idea of why we label. Like the first fella said, I'll learn a lot at my first Vipassana retreat, which is in May.   

[eskwire]

@PsiloPutty No labels. Don't whisper anything ever. Always come back to awareness of body/breath when the mind has wandered but don't work in labels. Remember the mind is learning through the body not the other way around. Vipassana involves no labels whatsoever - other meditation styles do and your mind will do it regardless, but remember that it is not desirable for this specific practice.

Yes you can do it at night. Ghoenke recommends it. 

You will learn everything at your retreat and it is best learned there. 

Edited February 12, 2018 by eskwire

[eskwire]

3 hours ago, Space said:

The majority of your focus should go into noticing experience. In response to one of the other comments here, you absolutely can actually whisper the label physically, as opposed to just saying it in your mind. Shinzen Young advocates this if you find your concentration is low. I find it's very effective and usually start out by quietly whispering the labels with my mouth. If you've got good concentration though you can just say them mentally. 

This is fair, but not Vipassana. Don't do this if you are trying to practice Vipassana exclusively.

[PsiloPutty]

Well, shoot. Now I'm confused because I thought the labelling aspect was an integral part of Vipassana.   

I'm not actually whispering anything. I edited my opening post to make that clearer just now. Thank you for posting!

[Nahm]

@PsiloPutty You might find this post useful. There’s a ‘posture meditation’ at the bottom, and well as some info on breath meditation, etc.

Also, laying on the floor on your stomach, and lifting each leg off the floor for a few minutes each day builds the back muscles and often eradicates the issue if it’s not too serious. 

 

 

[eskwire]

@PsiloPutty Where did you hear that labels were part of Vipassana? What instructions are you following?

I wouldn't discuss it on this forum because people are going to talk about meditation in general with you and there are many techniques. See how Nahm just posted totally different meditation techniques for you?

Vipassana is the most powerful meditation technique I have tried and you really need to learn it properly. Do whatever meditations you want until your retreat, just make sure you aren't thinking it's Vipassana. Wait until then to learn it right. 

--- edit ---

Ok so I did some reasearch and it seems like some people do advocate for labels in the beginning. The way I learned it (at a 10 day retreat with 1 day follow ups) does not advise this at all. Also, a central part of Vipassana is that pain no longer feels like pain, but like any other sensation. If you keep calling it pain through labels, you won't get to that point. I see big advantages to not using it and my teacher told me not to.

Just to give you the full story!! Good luck to you.

Edited February 13, 2018 by eskwire

[Space]

10 hours ago, PsiloPutty said:

Well, shoot. Now I'm confused because I thought the labelling aspect was an integral part of Vipassana.   

I'm not actually whispering anything. I edited my opening post to make that clearer just now. Thank you for posting!

As I mentioned in my previous post, some teachers advocate labelling, some don't. You need to try out different techniques and see which ones work best for you. The Do Nothing technique is Vipassana, but that obviously doesn't involve labelling. My understanding is that within the Goenka Vipassana tradition, no labels are used. So if you go on a traditional Vipassana retreat I don't think you will be using labels. But within the Mahasi Sayadaw tradition, on the other hand, labelling is a central aspect to the techniques. And i'm sure it varies in many other traditions too. I went on a Mahasi-style Vipassana retreat last year and I was labelling 24/7! In my opinion, labelling is very effective in reducing the chances of getting lost in monkey mind as Shinzen points out in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StBTuX0tqU8. I'm not sure why @eskwire is being so assertive about his way of doing things. It's just factually wrong to say that labels are not part of Vipassana. Leo has also advocated labelling for a long time now.

Also check out this video on using spoken labels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRPfi_Bw1pQ&t=4s

Edited February 13, 2018 by Space

[PsiloPutty]

Thank you again to everyone who posted. Great information all over in this thread, but it does underscore to me the fact that too much reading, researching and parsing is probably not a good idea for a novice, because it would in a lot of cases discourage them from pursuing the activity after getting overwhelmed in details and conflicting ideas.

I think I remember watching one of Leo's videos that talked about the dangers of too much academic research, especially without a solid practice foundation already built up. I'm an obsessively curious person, though, and my method is usually exhaustive research, so it might be a challenge to just roll with it on my own, but I feel really good after my meditations, so for the time being I don't think I can be screwing things up too badly.

A good point was made about not labeling pain as "pain." Maybe just labeling it as "feeling" would be a more neutral descriptor. 

[JustinS]

I have some experience with Vipassana and I think it’s a powerful technique. 

@PsiloPutty As soon as thoughts (any thoughts, thoughts are thoughts) arise, just come back ri the sensations on your body. If you can’t feel any sensations, start with 10min Anapana (focus on sensations of breath).

Don’t give it any thought when to stop and feel sensations, just do it. The point is to eventually feel the sutlest of the most sutle sensations pervasing your entire body with no cravings or aversions to pleasant or unpleasant sensations. ALL sensations are impermanent, so why cling to them right? We suffer most of the time cause we cling to good feelings and avert the bad, and like this we go back and forth, back and forth causing an aggitated mind. 

As for posture and back pain what helped me was getting in touch with the subtle sensations on your body. That means your minds got to be still and sharp. Whenever I observe my back pain and go deep into it, it’s just vibrations and when I stay there will attentive awareness it goes away everytime.

[PsiloPutty]

Good post there, and it makes a lot of sense. I'm excited to have this new meditation outlet. I look forward to it every day.