Dear

I am writing this to share my observations & insights. I could have misunderstood few things. pick what makes sense to you. Also- spoiler alerts ahead.

Vipassana is a way to expand one's consciousness and touch more of their unconsciousness.

Our interactions could lead to feelings ex dopamine hits, etc. That could get us distracted from observing ourselves. Our interactions happen via our senses i.e, hearing, visual, sensual, taste, and smell. The food we eat can alter our mood, the music, and the reading. Human touch/eye contact releases oxytocin. Even exercise releases feel-good hormones. One gets mentally prepared for the course by giving up most of the experiences which can keep them glued for 10 days. No mobile, no books, no human contact, no eye contact, no exercises, no religious chanting, eat simple food.

How do we expand consciousness and touch more of our unconsciousness? Observation can be one way. Several activities of our body such as heartbeat, hearing, kidney, liver, and breathing function involuntarily. Several activities of our body happen voluntarily like the movement of limbs, eating, and breathing. Wait!! What, breathing is both voluntary and involuntary? Yes, breath is considered as a bridge between the conscious and the unconscious. Hence the course starts with observation of the breath.

How to do the breath How to observe the breath: focus all the efforts on just observing the breath. how it flows at the entrance of the nostrils. As one observes the breath, the breath could pace up or down. **To mitigate this, one has put more mental effort to just focus and not alter the breath. The breath could feel slow or fast, don't worry just observe your breath and focus.

Distraction: As one starts the meditation session, it may take a pretty decent time to realize that they are imagining some random stuff, recollecting memories, and are distracted. It could take several seconds or even minutes for one to realize that they are distracted. Once they realize that they are distracted, it is advised to immediately pull back their attention to meditate and focus on their breath. Right when one realizes that the focus is lost, it's advised to not don't feel bad about losing focus. Instead, immediately return to meditation. Over time, a mental model gets built to automatically move back to the meditative state. The depth of the meditative state increases.

Several hours into the meditation It could feel that the breath is happening from one nostril only and one may start to worry and feel the urge to force achieve the imagined normalcy. D*on't worry just observe your breath and focus. (This is the biology *Nasal cycle). For me realizing that the nasal cycle is something common I have been going through all my life, but observing that for the first time, gave me a true surprise. This gave me the confidence that the process is going in the right direction. I questioned myself - How much of my body am I yet to observe?

Observation of the breathing inflow and outflow: One could further observe the breath by, how the thin muscle along with the nose contracts while inhaling and expands while exhaling. How the airflows happen inside the nostril during inhalation and exhalation. The subtle difference in the moisture and the temperature of the air as it is inhaled and exhaled. // At a point when I was extremely focusing on the heat of the air I was exhaling, I felt like my mustache was being burnt.

Increasing the precision of focus: A couple of days into the course we are asked to have our entire focus onto the mustache area, a triangular area below the nose and above the upper lips. I could start observing sensations or vibrations or shocks or tickles in this part of the body as sudden sparks. The course instructs to focus on these sensations and stop focusing on the breath at that time. As the sensations disappear one is advised to focus on the breath again and focus back on sensations as and when they appear. Over a period of time, the sensation is felt frequently all over the body.