How does the skin feel after derma rolling

I used 0,3mm roller on a small patch of the face and another patch on the body, for comparison. There are no marks on the skin visible but in both places the skin feels a bit irritated. It feels like after having put your hand into a cactus pot that has those very fine needles that you're later trying to take our but you can't find any. Ah so that's how a tiny punctures in the skin feel like! Fascinating :) it's been one night and the sensation is this still the same.. I guess until it stops I should be careful with it..

[Update]

So after a few days I tried it on the face. Same sensation but it was gone after 1+ day. After that the skin was a bit redish, and after it it became kind of.. thicker.. at least when I touch it I feel it less.. not exactly what I was looking for.. I have the impression that all the impurities became even more pronounced since they are sticking out more.. will wait some weeks to see if there is any other improvement, but regarding wrinkles or skin pores - no difference so far.

Meditation and Vipassana is not magic!

I do not quite like it when people refer to meditation as "new age bullshit", or accuse people who say it works of magical thinking.

When you go to a doctor, he prescribes you pills, and you believe that those pills will work. Why do you believe it? Because one person - the doctor - said so? Because there was a research done that proves that those pills work? Who told you there was a research done? People on the Internet? And you believe them? Why? Is it about sufficient amount of people before you start believing? Why don't you then become a Muslim or Christian - is there not a sufficient amount of religious people around? Or is it maybe about what the most people around you believe in?

I say until you study medicine and do the research yourself, all you can do is magical thinking that goes like this: "for some reason it works even though I don't know why". Then why is a person who says "I don't know why meditation works but it works" is accused of magical thinking and being silly?

In the end there is nothing mystical or magical in how meditation works. The basic technique of focusing on your breath - is simply an exercise drill in the ability to focus. It's focus training, nothing else! And it is not exercising staying focus, it is exercising bringing the focus back, and not understanding it is why many people give up on meditation thinking that they cannot stay without thoughts running through their head. Almost no one can. When you do muscle training you do not progress by trying to keep them flexed for maximum amount of time, you usually train them by doing repetitions. This is what the moment of bringing the focus back is - a repetition. The more times you bring the focus back, the better you become at it. The easier and faster you bring the focus back to what you are doing in your life, the more of your life you will spend in a focused state. And it goes without saying that a living in a focused state makes your life better.

Why focus on the breath, not something else - breath is the only thing in our body that we can do both voluntarily and involuntarily - you can control you breath, but when you stop you will not stop breathing, the body will take over. Therefore focusing on breath is especially efficient as it makes you constantly balance between two polarities: you do not want to go into doing mode and focus on controlling your breath, at the same time you don't want to go into watching mode where you space out like in front of the TV and start thinking about something else. It's simply tricky enough, and as a bonus it forces you to make some contact with your body (more about it below). And your breath is always with you, you can use it any time.

And now about how Vipassana works, the technique that comes from Buddha. Religion aside, the 10 day courses of Vipassana are nothing more than putting you in a very extreme and difficult prolonged situation (similar to a prison), where yes it is fucking hard to fulfill the expectations you had towards yourself when you joined. It's a set up for a failure. And of course in that hard situations everyone will freak out, and everyone will freak out in their specific ways, and of course it is your personal stuff that you would rather not deal with that will come up. And since you are not allowed to interact with people there, you are not allowed to read or write, you are not allowed to use any distractions, you are forced to actually deal with your emotional shit. And since all happens in a controlled almost sterile environment, where they even feed you, it is much easier to do it than it would be in a real stressful life. That's how people go through "spiritual transformations" in those courses. This "spirituality" is nothing more than ability to look into yourself, know your shit and deal with it.

I think that the actual Vipassana technique works in different way and - just as they say in the course - it is unlikely that someone will get a real benefit from it just after 10 days. So what is Vipassana - it is a kind of body scan. As it is now known to science, there are two kinds of long term memory - the explicit memory in hippocampus - a kind of registry of past events, as well as implicit memory - that is the way your whole body has been affected by your life. People have car accidents after which their body posture changes - the trauma gets trapped in the body. So what does body scan do - it brings the awareness to what is in the body, so that again - you can deal with that shit. As a bonus, you gain more awareness of your body, which lets you know far in advance when you are about to freak out or say or do something that you would regret and gives you a possibility not to do it. Yes, our body is a part of us! Something many people forget. Emotions start in the body, not in the head. They should really teach this in school.

Now why all this religious stuff around meditation. Well, this is where it historically evolved. And I think what is the other benefit of it is that it is easier to be brave when faced with your emotional shit when you entertain the possibility that there is a higher meaning behind it, that there is an entity that wants you to do it, that will guide you. It is simply the trick to believe that you can do it before you start trying - which, as we know, is super important for the outcome.

Vipassana in Pushkar, India

I have attended and completed (!) a 10 day Vipassana meditation course in Pushkar, India. Before going there I was of course looking for information and other people's impressions, so now I'd like to give something back and write about my experience. I will not describe what Vipassana is about as it can be all found on their website (www.dhamma.org). I want to write about two things: the centre I have been to (since myself when going to do Vipassana in India I was very concerned that I don't end up in some shabby place), and my experience in connection with what kind of person I am. Many people write about their experiences and they vary a lot, but it is out of context of what kind of people they are. For someone considering to attend a Vipassana course this context is important in order to appropriately judge whether it is something for them or not.

The Pushkar Vipassana centre

The centre is located close to a town Pushkar, which is in Rajasthan, a part of India that is very popular among tourist. Rajasthan is located a bit on the north side of India, and it is a desert area. That means hot days and cool nights. In January that means warm fresh days and cold nights.

Location. It's not located very conveniently for accessibility, we took a cab there and that was probably the best choice. It's a bit on the outskirts of a town. On the way back we adventureously took a bus to Pushkar (which stops right in the centre), which was an.. interesting experience. But nothing tragic or not even bad :) just crowded loud and shaky. They also can organize a cab for you if you wanna go back by cab.

Facilities. Of course basic, but not dirty. We were supposed to clean the accommodation ourselves before leaving, I kind of left it a bit cleaner than I found it. The bed has a mattress, also thick heavy blanket. Small flat pillow. We got clean bed linen. I needed a sleeping bag in addition to the blanket though (of course there's no heating). They are tiny houses with 2 beds and a private bathroom in each. I was lucky enough to be alone in mine, only two girls out of around 10 had to share a room (how do you share a room when being forbidden to communicate? According to our course organisers "surprisingly easy", luckily I did not have to verify it :p). It's important to note that all the buildings were built with the intention that they stay cool inside. Stone floors, high ceilings, probably isolated roofs, windows pushed a bit "in" so that they get no sunshine.. As it's possible to imagine in January with 9 degrees at night it was not exactly optimal. The meditation hall got enough warmed with the bodies of participants though. There is a place on the door handle to lock it with a locker (if one brought one), there are mosquito nets in the windows, and there is warm water, from sun batteries. There's a fan on the ceiling, electricity, even a power socket.

The meditation and me

Was it worth it? Definitely yes! But I was quite surprised to find out at the end of the course that few people (aka women, as men and women are separated, so I didn't speak to men) shared my opinion. That is what inspired me to write about my experience in the context of what kind of person I am.

Discipline and tough work. The course is difficult. Every day 10 hours of staying focused, interrupted with few breaks. The longest meditation segment is 4 hours, only with 5 minute breaks, which is barely enough to take a pee (drinking water and taking a pee become an issue to be scheduled btw). Getting up at 4am. Such regime is hard both physically and mentally. This meditation is about doing tedious mental job, and it is tiring, and it is not rewarding. You hear all the time "work patiently, patiently and consistently", and yes this is what you do, minute by minute. You need a lot of inner motivation. Determination. I think I am kind of good with that. It's not that it was easy for me, it was super hard, and for last two days I felt like mentally puking with it, but I knew I can make it till the end. Before my knee accident I used to do jogging 10km and I also ran an (unofficial) half marathon twice, and while the first days felt like 10km runs, the 8th and 9th day felt like mental half marathon. And how one other (dissapointed) person put it at the end "Sometimes you do this enormous effort, like climbing a big mountain, you are sweating and sweating, and everything hurts, but then you get to the top, you look at the view and you know it was worth it. This felt similar, except the last part.". Yes that is what I mean about being not rewarding. Do not expect a feeling of achievement, there is no immediate results. If you usually motivate yourself with expecting a feeling of achievement then you may get very dissapointed unless you change your attitude for Vipassana. Actually Vipassana is exactly about not expecting anything, not craving anything. Let me add one more thing, it is not true that being not a super disciplined person makes it useless for you to go to the course. I guess everyone does as good as they can. Also the fact that you are not allowed to speak with other people but you see them doing well motivates you not to give up. You will actually work much harder than you thought you were able to. But at the end of the course you will not be relaxed. You will be exhausted. But it is the good kind of being exhausted.

Perfectionism and overthinking. This would be a big trap for me, but luckily I read about it in some other Vipassana blog post (thank you someone!). Having perfectionistic attitude is very bad when it comes to Vipassana (is actually bad in general ;)). And also, having this attitude plus knowing that having such attitude is bad (just in order to be more perfect) is still not the point :D As Mr Goenka put it in one of the lectures: "If a house lady wants to wash a piece of clothing, she takes a soap, rubs it into the clothes, and the clothes get washed. She does not need to know about the chemical reactions that occur between the dirt and the soap, she does not need to help those reactions happen. She is just doing a simple activity of rubbing the soap, without caring about how the soap works. That is what the soap was invented for, so that anyone can use it". Exactly same with Vipassana. Just follow the instructions. This technique is made for "an average intelligence person", and is supposed to work just by applying it. One does not have to understand it inside out. And next, it is also hard to keep away from the perfectionist trap. Seeing other people, imagining how well they are doing, comparing yourself to them, even comparing yourself to yourself from 1 hour ago - all dangerous. Any act of evaluation of oneself is already bringing a judgement into play, one of the attitudes that should be avoided. It's hard, as of course you always want to know how well you are doing, where you are on the scale of progress. Just like you want to know how much time is left until the end of meditation hour. Patience, patience and tedious work. Not craving anything.

Not being allowed to speak to anyone (except the teacher or the course helpers). I loved it! No stupid small talks like "how are you?", "how was your day?". Seriously, I hate exchanging such superficial bullshit. And because our days were completely filled with agenda items, if we were allowed to talk, such stuff is all we would be able to speak about. For me - perfect! You get a chance to socialise on the 10th day anyway, so it is not that you will not have a chance to exchange your experiences.

Fear of religious stuff. Many people get suspicious when it comes to anything that is connected to religion or spirituality. I am not sure why that is, but since I was brought up Catholic, I have nothing against people believing in things and telling me about what they believe in. I am not afraid that someone will brainwash me. I do not think that it is so easy to influence my thinking, if I did then I would be more concerned about that than anyone religious or spiritual talking to me. Even though Vipassana is told to be non sectarian and totally religion agnostic technique, you do hear about Buddism beliefs as well as other religions during the evening lectures. Some people could get freaked out by this, or just simply shut down. I liked what one girl said "I am not afraid of fanatic people, I just listen to them and I take what I want, and the rest I do not take". I have a kind of similar attitude. Not that anyone was fanatic there, I'm writing it just to make my point. Also the morning chanting could make someone conscious, but same here, I do not see why I should be concerned. When I now think about it, of course it was kind of obvious that we will hear about Buddism, in the end it is not that easy to separate the two, as the technique was invented in the context of Buddism. For me it was actually interesting to hear about this theory. I understandd it as the historical context. In the end if I ever get enlighted by any chance, and see what Buddha supposedly saw, then I can still change my opinion ;)

Listening to the evening lectures. This guy in the video (called Mr Goenka) really explains everything well. Some things he even repeats multiple times. Yet still I get the impression that some people just don't listen. Either they don't listen or they don't understand, or they don't want to understand. Even having read other people's blog posts about Vipassana I already see that some people do not listen to those lectures and fall into the traps that are mentioned there. Please, listen to the fabulous instructions. I know that they are a bit longish and the guy is not the most concise fellow on Earth, but still, he knows what he is talking about. And he is speaking from experience of teaching many people. He knows what mistakes people tend to make. I am a software developer and it a kind of reminds me of people who do not read the documentation and then are complaining about the piece of software being useless.

Benefits

What are the benefits of this whole affair. While some people write about being high or almost out of the body experiences (btw focusing on it is one of the traps), I think that the sensual or audio-visual experiences are really not that important. It is fascinating though what the brain can start doing when left on its own with minimal input from the outside for long enough time.

There are obvious benefits coming already from how the course is organised. Because you are not allowed to talk, read or write, you give away your mobile phone (!), you really have nothing else to do than focus on yourself. And you have all the time in the world for that. It made me realise how little time we actually have for it in everyday life. I would say it is close to zero. So, introspection, forced introvertism. And it is not that you start thinking about situations from 10 years ago, or you remember about how it was when you were a child, no. You actually live very much in the moment, you go to the meditation hours, go for lunch, take a shower, go to the meditation hours. But in the meantime you react to what happens outside you in your typical way (in the end there are still people around). And because there are no other distractions, your typical reactions are very exposed and clear to you. I became shocked to realise my typical reactions. It's making your problems very visible, as long as you are attentive to them and not get washed away with "omg this is so annoying why did I come here". Better pay attention. One can learn a lot about oneself just because of this.

Then, meditation. First three days is practicing Anapana, which is supposed to help you focus. I am a very "multitasking" person, and usually find it really hard to focus on what someone is even saying to me for more than few seconds. Sometimes I find myself having more than 1 train of thoughs at a time (or at least it feels so to me). These three days actually did make a change. The time of spacing out while watching the evening lecture got descreased from my typical 10-30 minutes to 2-10 seconds! Of course now, after 2 more weeks of vacation this effect is almost gone, but that is because I have not practiced it since then (still planning though, once I get into my normal week work rhythm).

Next 7 days we were practicing the actual Vipassana, which is about doing whole body scan, part by part, while keeping certain state of mind. A side effect of this was that I realised how small I am. I realised that being trapped in all my thoughts and projections about what other people think about me, I imaginerily expanded myself way beyond my physical body. When I entered a room I would imagine I take all the space of that room, while most of the people would not even notice me. Realising that you are only actually as big as your physical body takes away so much weight from you. It made me feel much lighter. Smaller. Humbler.

And now to the real effect of Vipassana. This is what the actual point of this meditation is, though I am not sure if I got that benefit yet. Purification of the mind. While you meditate emotions come to you and those emotions feel very familiar. You are supposed to acknowledge them but not react to them emotionally. I am not sure if what I experienced was caused by Vipassana, since every time I had those emotions coming they still came in response to some external event, though right after meditation. It happened twice, on the 7th and 8th day. And yes, both of those emotions were very intense and they brought up really deep negative beliefs about myself. I have been crying but without tears. Yes, I felt those emotions coming in waves. After the second episode I thought to myself "wow, now I feel like I felt when I was 23". I am not sure if those beliefs got eradicated now. When I think about them now they feel untrue to me, but maybe when I am in some very bad mental state I may still believe in them? The time will show.