How meditation became part of my life

My first experience with meditation was a 10-day Vipassana course in Thailand. At that point, I had only recently heard about meditation while travelling through Cambodia, Laos and the rest of Southeast Asia, where these practices originally come from.I heard about "silent retreats" from Suan Mokkh forest temple and went there without hesitation as soon as the next course started. To be honest, I did not fully understand what meditation really was at this point, but something just pulled me in. I simply arrived at old traditional Buddhist temple — and the course began.Ten days of silence, discipline and observing everything that arises in the body and mind is not easy especially without any experience. There is no talking, no phones, no books, no music and nowhere to escape into when the mind becomes restless. The bed is hard, the food is simple and every discomfort in the body suddenly becomes impossible to ignore. Every pain, every craving and every restless thought becomes impossible to ignore. One could probably ask- why to go there if its pure suffering?In this kind of environment, you begin to notice how much of everyday life is built around comfort, stimulation and distraction. But there is nowhere to hide from yourself. Everything is experienced in silence, sitting cross-legged for hours each day from early morning until evening. I started to understand what meditation really was. I learned that discomfort itself is not really the real problem, but how I respond to it. The more I stopped reacting automatically with anger, resistance or wanting to escape, the more space and peace I began to feel inside myself. I learned to surrender and to deeply relax.

From that point on, meditation naturally became part of my life. It did not suddenly make life easy, but it helped me slow down, observe myself more clearly and relate differently to inner and external discomforts that would otherwise control my mood, reactions and peace of mind.There are many forms of meditation and Vipassana is just one very deep way to go. Some techniques use visualisation, repetition, breath or movement. The can be short or long etc. In Vipassana meditation, there is no visualisation and no special pose or movement. For me, it is one of the purest forms of meditation, based simply on observing the breath and the body over an extended period of time.There are very few rules and the technique itself is so simple that it almost makes you question whether it can really work. Yet millions of people have practised and benefited from it for many generations. Vipassana itself is one of the oldest meditation techniques in the world, originating in India more than 2,500 years ago.For some people, it is brutally boring, and in the overstimulated world we live in today, it can sound worse than prison. But maybe that is exactly why it works. There is nothing to entertain you, distract you or help you escape yourself. Just sitting in silence, observation and whatever is happening in the present moment.That is why I have kept returning to Vipassana over the years. So far, I have completed 4 times 10-day silent retreats: Thailand (2015), Russia (2016), Sri Lanka (2018) and most recently Latvia (2025).

If you want to know more about Vipassana meditation then click on the following link:

I do not necessarily teach Vipassana meditation itself, but I often include small elements of these techniques in my yoga classes and sometimes in private sessions for people who feel anxious, overwhelmed or overstimulated.Meditation and mindfulness are also often part of my presentations and workshops around mental health and self-care.If you feel any connection to this approach or would like to collaborate, please feel free to reach out.

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