*living a monk lifestyle for ten days* Vipassana retreats are pretty famous. The schedule for these ten days went as follows: 4am: wake up 4:30am - 6:30am: meditate 6:30am - 8am: breakfast & break 8am - 9am: meditate 9am - 11am: meditate 11am - 1pm: lunch & break 1pm - 2:30pm: meditate 2:30pm - 3:30pm: meditate 3:30pm - 5pm: meditate 5pm - 6pm: drink tea 6pm - 7pm: meditate 7pm - 8:30pm: meditation explainer 8:30pm - 9pm: meditate In short, I meditated ~10 hours a day for ten days. What arose was nothing surprising. There weren't any extreme moments of enlightenment or perceptible changes in my mental abilities. I'm extremely confident nothing to date has affected me more — despite the only reason for booking this retreat being my desire to avoid booking two weeks of accommodation/travel in Asia (commitment issues, you know how it goes).