If there is one blog article that really belongs into the category "Crazy Fun Shit", it's this one 😆 I would like to report on my experiences with the so-called "Cathartic Meditation", which is practiced in the Meditation & Silence Retreat of the Nisala Foundation and Center for Energy and Consciousness Studies in Sri Lanka, Udadumbara. Caution: This is only something for people with strong nerves, so much has to be said in advance.

How did it all start?

At breakfast in the Wild Child Cafe in Tiruvannamalai, Aaron, a traveler in search of the meaning of life like me, tells me that he experienced catharsis during a meditation retreat. The special thing about the retreat was that you had to shout out your frustration as a group against a wall for 15 minutes. Just to let you know, because I also had to google it: Catharsis is an ancient Greek word meaning "purification". In psychology, it refers to the process of freeing oneself from psychological conflicts and internal tensions through emotional reaction. As a result, suppressed feelings lose their disturbing effect, as they can be freely expressed and acted out. So far so good - I already was extremely interested in the whole thing!

5 weeks later, I am sitting in the meditation hall of the Cathartic Meditation Retreat in Sri Lanka and am looking forward to my very own personal catharsis. Before the cathartic meditation rounds begin on day 3 of 4 days in total, we first receive an introduction to Shoonya Meditation on day 1 & 2. This is a Buddhist form of meditation that cultivates how to neutrally observe your own thoughts from a "Witnessing Consciousness". The aim: you get out of energy-consuming dynamics of inner spirals of thought. In other words: instead of racking your brain over things, drifting off into lengthy evaluative pondering or losing yourself in stirring emotions, in Shoonya state you take one step back and look at yourself from a bird's eye view. In this state, there are no more thoughts and devaluations; this state is pure objective awareness and freedom. 

Shoonya Meditation - perceiving the world as a neutral witness

Our meditation teacher Ancharin explains the Shoonya state to us using an example: he places a white cup on the table in front of him and asks: "What can you see?" We answer that we see a white cup and Ancharin asks us how we know that. We answer that it is a white cup because it looks like a cup and the color is white. He asks us who said that cups look like this and how we know that the color is white. These questions go on for a while until we don't know anything anymore and doubt whether the object in front of him is really a cup at all 😆 At this point, Ancharin stops and becomes quiet. "Exactly," he says, "we classify everything we see into mentally constructed categories of description and evaluation. But what we can really perceive here is only an accumulation of energy in a condensed form." With Shoonya, we train non-judgemental perception and thus bring a healing distance between ourselves and our thoughts. "You need to remove yourself to see the ultimate consciousness," he says with a slightly diabolical and yet charming smile and that's exactly what we now practice for 17 hours a day in the form of sitting and walking meditations.

Day 3. I'm ready. The catharsis can begin.

We are taken to the building especially built for cathartic meditations on the hill of the site. It is soundproof. It has high walls. There are only windows below the roof. What happens in here shall stay inside. First, we do a meditation, then everyone gets up, looks for a place in front of the wall and Ancharin gives the signal with a strict voice: "Now everyone shout and cry!" What happens next is beyond everything I have ever experienced. 30 people begin to shout out the deepest pain of their life, people around me break down in tears and lie writhing and sobbing on the floor. I hear shrill screams of deepest despair from women that sound like screams of tortured baby voices that go through your bones. At the same time, I am roaring myself and experience how issues suddenly pop to the surface from my subconscious, like small balloons that I am unsuccessfully trying to push under water. Memories shoot into my head and bring tears to my eyes; a movie plays before my eyes consisting of the faces of people, from earliest childhood to the present, who hurt me deeply, made me small, bitched about me, or still stand in my way. I yell at these people, I am yelling at them, I am yelling at them, yes, I am yelling at them from the depths of my soul.

Anger that bursts like balloons

This process is repeated 3 times during the day. It's bizarre, but with each round my heart gets lighter. It is as if balloons are pushing to the water surface and I finally stop pressing them down, and in this very moment they pick up full speed, shoot out of the water and then simply burst in the air! What remains is space, so much more space. At the end of the day, we conclude with a round of laughter, which is truly a bizarre way to end the whole thing. Everyone laughs for 15 minutes and the room is filled with sounds ranging from hearty to extremely hysterical laughter. After an 18-hour day, I fall into bed dead tired. I have rarely experienced anything crazier in my life. But crazy is good, because it shifts things into a new place. That's a good thing.

A truly crazy approach...

Looking back, I can say that this meditation retreat was certainly one of the craziest approaches I have experimented with so far on my personal path towards enlightenment. It is a brutal, but indeed extremely effective method and I am grateful that I was able to have made this experience. Interestingly, my digestion was regulated after the retreat, which until then I could only keep in balance with the intake of Ayurvedic medication. For me, a sign that a cleansing has taken place in the biological body, starting from the mental and energetic body. Therefore, my recommendation to everyone who is open to a good dose of crayz, fun Shit 😀

For everyone brave: Here is the link to Nisala Foundation.They also offer online retreats 😉

Lots of Love,

Your Salome