Vipassana Meditation and Psychosomatic Diseases

To suppress a traumatic event always has negative consequences. What is pushed under - whether it be consciously or unconsciously - is not pushed 'out.' Moreover, it not only stays, its grows. It can become dangerous. Often it grows until it can no longer be contained to where it was initially pushed. It is this perpetual growth that brings with it so many of our woes.

I was recently watching a documentary on the HMAS Voyager/HMAS Melbourne accident. In it a survivor mentions something a lot of lay people have not realized. A traumatic event might appear to leave little or no effect - at first. The young people involved in the above-mentioned accident did not, in many cases, exhibit any lasting ill effects. Not at first. They were fit, healthy, and could dismiss such a tragedy from their consciousness.

But their bodies and subconsciousness did not forget. The emotions felt at the time went deep, and began to grow. Years, sometimes decades later, the bad dreams, the nightmares, which precede a real emotional breakdown began to appear.

Sounds exaggerated? And how does it happen?

According to Vipassana Meditational teachers - one of whom was reputed to be Gautama, the Buddha himself, advised us that every thought has its emotional component. Sometimes that emotional component is so slight upon us that it is like a finger dipped into water. Not a trace is left when we remove that finger. Sometimes it is like words written into beach sand that is washed away with the incoming tide. Sometimes, however, the emotions are like words chiselled into granite. These are the dangerous ones. They begin to grow, to intensify, to gain in solidity.

These emotional deposits are what Buddhists called Sankaras. They continue to grow within us. They precipitate out of this nebulous dimension known initially as an emotional-thought, leaching out and ( the way it has been put by some) lowering in frequency vibration until they eventually manifest in the physical spectrum. What starts as unease, becomes an ache, becomes a pain, becomes a....

Is there a way out?

Lots of different therapies have been tried. Some work better than others. Here's what Dr. Abhaykumar K. Shah, says about one of them in his essay, Vipassana and Psychosomatic Diseases.

"The root cause of these problems is the psychic process whereby aversion is produced. This process is a repeated reaction to aversion (at the unconscious level) producing functional disturbances in various organs and glands, which in turn produce metabolic and hormonal imbalances. If this process continues for some time, it even produces pathological disturbances in various organs which can lead to ulceration, tensions, spasms, and various mental disturbances."

He then describes some of the benefits of regular Vipassana Meditation. He finishes with:

"I have seen drug addicts and strongly addicted alcoholics giving up their cravings. Thus several psychosomatic diseases are completely cured or considerably helped depending upon the length of meditation carried out every day."

He's inferring here that once we start, we should keep up the practice. I have. I've been into it for thirty-two years at time of writing this.

Here is what another medico, Jean Claude Se'e, has to say, in part, in his essay, From Psychotherapy to Vipassana. Remember, this man is a Gestalt therapist from Paris, France. He is talking about how he felt after just ONE ten-day Vipassana retreat.

"One can only bear witness to the absolutely overwhelming intensity of this experience and the deep inner transformation it brings. After that first course, I felt that a profound cleansing, clarifying, and purifying of my mind and body had taken place. I felt very strongly that those ten days were the most important in my whole life until then."

Author's experience in the technique

Having undertaken fourteen such ten-day courses, I can concur with Jean Claude Se'e's finding. That very first course really does bring us some deep realizations of who and what we are - and what we are not. But back to Jean Claude Se'e.

"I am convinced that beyond the different techniques of psychotherapy, the only therapeutic factor is real love and compassion, non-egoistic, totally disinterested- which asks nothing in return."

And again, further down...

"At the same time, Gestalt therapy, as well as all the other known therapies, appear to me to be more and more limited when compared with the striking therapeutic power of Vipassana."

Later again.

"Of course, Vipassana is not and doesn't pretend to be a therapy (even though its effects obviously are) "The goal is not the cure of psychological symptoms; it is the total Liberation from all conditions states."

So what does Vipassana do?

It gradually and systematically purifies the mind and the body. It eradicates all the falsehoods about who and what we think we are. As it does so it dissolves the build-ups, the emotional residue, which has grown within our minds and bodies, thus causing us unease, frustration, angst, even fear. Gradually it brings us inner peace and, with that increasing inner peace comes increasing mental and physical health.

My book on the subject

In a book I wrote: Where Are You - Me?, written some twelve years after I began the regular practice of Vipassana, I described some of the phenomena pertaining to the practice - particularly what I'd experienced during some of my ten-day courses. The title of this book points to its theme. "Where am I?" A laser-like and pencil slim, probe as my Conscious Attention went into every part of my body, revealed there is no 'exact point within' which I reside. It could not be found. When it seemed to be above the point where I was searching, with a 'look,' it proved it to be below. When I went below, it seemed to be above. The same to the left and the right. There is NO point within us that is the focal point of where we are, even though to most of us, it seems to be SOMEWHERE in our heads.

I went right into the center of my head with my consciously probing and highly focused attention and I was not there. I could only conclude that I have no center of being. That it is an illusion to believe we are this body in which our consciousness seems to reside. It is as if we have something within us we can touch but it is not fully us. We are that which is being touched but are also the toucher. It is indeed an enigma.

But to get back to one of the very practical benefits of Vipassana (apart from its greatest one) that of alleviating mental trauma. It seems that despite this method having been around for roughly two-and-a-half thousand years, the Medical Fraternity, for the most part, have yet to discover it. A thousand therapies have come into being over the past couple of hundred years yet most of us have yet to learn that so many of these do not 'permanently root out,' the causes. Explanations and revelations might help - and probably do in many instances, but not always.

Take for example the present day fascination with Anger Management. Surely Managing is not the same as Dissolving Permanently?

But I'd better stop. This essay could become another book...