Vipassana meditation: One woman's narrative

SummaryIn Thailand there is cultural acknowledgement of a range of traditional therapies (including complementary therapies) used in Thai health care. Meditation enjoys wide acceptance within Thai culture and attracts strong participation from western visitors to Thai Buddhist Centres because of growing interest in personal health for future preventative health problems. The extensive use of complementary therapies in health care and the cultural acceptance of such therapies as meditation for stress-release and as a personal health strategy for maintenance of well-being are possible lessons to be learned in contemporary western healthcare. In this paper the practise of vipassana meditation offers a strategy to manage such health care issues as somatic responses including stress and anxiety. This article provides a narrative of one person's lived embodied experience of vipassana meditation in Thailand. It has been presented in narrative form to provide an insight into what happened and how it happened.