Is Vipassana worth it? Costs, evidence and who it's not for

Is Vipassana worth it? That depends on what you want from it and what you can give it. This article weighs up the 10-day silent course in S. N. Goenka's tradition, with sources: what it costs, what research has and hasn't shown, what people who have sat one have said on the record, and who should talk to the organisers or a doctor first. It is not medical advice, and it doesn't rank Vipassana against other ways of meditating.

What a 10-day course costs: time, money and effort

Time is the largest cost. The course spans 12 calendar days with arrival and departure, and dhamma.org says you must stay for all of it. The bell rings at 4:00 am and there are about ten hours of meditation a day, 100 hours of sitting in all by one research team's count. Phones and other devices are handed to the management until the course ends.

Money is the smallest. There is no charge for teaching, room or food. Courses run only on donations, accepted only from people who have completed a 10-day course, so a first-time student pays nothing and may give at the end. Travel is your own cost. Is Vipassana free? explains the details and what other traditions charge.

The effort is real. dhamma.org says the course "does require hard, serious work", but that "if you are in reasonable physical and mental health and willing to make a sincere effort, the course will be manageable". It also says most participants complete the course. The Code of Discipline adds that a course "is not a rest cure, a holiday, or an opportunity for socializing". The 10-day course, day by day sets out the timetable and rules.

Does Vipassana really work? What the research shows

It depends on what "work" means. Studies of residential Vipassana courses mostly measure stress, well-being and mindfulness with questionnaires, and on those measures the results are mostly positive. The studies are also few and small. What research says about Vipassana goes through each one; in brief:

• A community study. Szekeres and Wertheim (2015) followed 122 people through a standardised residential Vipassana course and compared them with 50 people who had enrolled but not yet started. Stress fell, and well-being, self-kindness and mindfulness rose. At six months, among the 90 who were followed up, some gains had faded, stress most of all, but scores were still better than before the course.
• A migraine trial. Goyal and colleagues (2023) enrolled 58 people with migraine for a 10-day course and followed them for a year, with no comparison group. Forty-five completed the course. At 12 months the group averaged 2.7 fewer migraine days in every 28, from 16.6 at the start.
• Reviews. A 2025 review of eleven Vipassana studies since 2010, three of them randomised trials, found "moderate evidence" of benefit, particularly for stress, anxiety and migraine, limited by small samples, risk of bias and no blinding. A 2017 meta-analysis of 21 studies of retreats in many traditions (2,912 people) found them moderately effective, though significant differences between studies limit the conclusions.

What has not been shown matters as much. In these course studies nobody was assigned to a course at random, so the people who apply and finish may differ from those who don't, and most results are self-reported. No study shows that Vipassana cures an illness, and the Code of Discipline says plainly: "Its purpose is not to cure disease." A 2014 review of 47 trials of meditation programmes in general found no evidence that they were better than active treatments such as drugs, exercise or other behavioural therapies.

So is Vipassana good or bad? Neither word fits everyone. dhamma.org says that "most people report improvements in their mental well-being after participating in a course", and the studies above broadly agree; it also warns that old reaction patterns can resurface.

Can Vipassana change your life? What participants have said

Many people add "reddit" when they search for Vipassana, looking for first-hand accounts. A forum post and a published interview are both one person's experience, but an interview is on the record and can be checked. Three people who have spoken publicly about their courses:

• Yuval Noah Harari, the historian, told The Guardian in 2016 that as a student at Oxford he "couldn't make sense of my life at all", and a friend suggested Vipassana. "It transformed my life," he said.
• Jack Dorsey, then Twitter's chief executive, sat a course at a centre in Myanmar in 2018. CNBC quoted him calling it "extremely painful and demanding physical and mental work", and also saying: "The time I take away to do this gives so much back to me and my work."
• Richard Davidson, the neuroscientist, sat his first course with Goenka in India in 1974. On the Hidden Brain podcast in 2023 he called it "a hard-nosed kind of meditation bootcamp", with "a lot of physical pain involved". Of coming home he said: "The first few days, the sense of calm is mostly preserved, but then after a few days, it honestly quickly wore off." To change the course of the mind, he added, "you need a lot more."

dhamma.org puts both sides of this. Its page on Vipassana says: "Even ten days can provide results which are vivid and obviously beneficial in everyday life." Its Q&A adds: "To develop in the practice is a lifetime job."

Harari, Dorsey and Davidson chose to speak publicly, and none of them can tell you what a course will do for you. More accounts, with sources, are in famous people who have practised Vipassana.

Why Vipassana is not for everyone

The organisers say so. The Code of Discipline says the meditation "will suit only those willing to work seriously and observe the discipline". In 2024, responding to Untold: The Retreat, a Financial Times podcast that reported cases of serious distress on courses in Goenka's tradition, the director of one centre in British Columbia wrote that "these courses are not for everyone", as NPR reported.

Think again, or talk to the organisers and your doctor before applying, if any of these apply:

• A history of significant mental-health problems. The Code warns: "Even when someone's mental health is currently stable, with or without medication, old symptoms may resurface during or after the course." It does not recommend courses for people with significant mental-health issues.
• Depression, anxiety, panic or PTSD that is overwhelming now. dhamma.org suggests working with a health professional. The Insight Meditation Society (IMS) says that after considerable recent trauma, or with significant depression, anxiety or strong PTSD, a silent retreat "may not be appropriate for you at this time in your life".
• Hoping for a cure. dhamma.org says "Vipassana is not a cure for illness", and that its teachers and volunteers are not medical, psychological or counselling practitioners.
• Not being able to keep the commitments. Students stay for the whole course, keep Noble Silence and set aside every other practice for the ten days.
• A physical condition. Chairs are provided for people who cannot sit on the floor; if unsure about a condition, dhamma.org asks you to write to the centre.

Research on adverse effects gives a sense of scale, not a forecast for any one person. In a population-based US survey of 434 people who had meditated (Goldberg and colleagues, 2022), 10.6% reported some loss of functioning and 1.2% said it lasted a month or more. Childhood adversity was linked to higher risk, and people who reported adverse effects were as glad to have meditated as those who did not. A 2020 review found that adverse events can occur in people with no previous mental-health problems. Against that, a 2024 controlled study of six-day insight retreats found that intense, mostly unpleasant experiences, such as flashbacks, occurred at similar rates in retreat participants and in matched meditators going about daily life.

If something applies to you, describe it in full on the application, and don't stop a medicine without medical advice. Difficult experiences on meditation retreats covers the research and the podcast in detail, and before your first course the health questions on the form.

Why Vipassana, and not another kind of meditation?

Research doesn't settle this. A 2017 meta-analysis of retreats found no differences between meditation styles. A 2022 survey of 1,668 meditators found Vipassana as taught by Goenka, along with compassion and loving-kindness practices, among the practices more strongly linked to good psychological outcomes, though a survey like that cannot show cause.

What a residential course in Goenka's tradition offers is a particular format:

• Continuity in seclusion. Ten days inside the course boundaries, about ten hours of practice a day. The Code says: "Continuity of the practice in seclusion is the secret of this technique's success."
• Silence. Noble Silence, which the Code defines as "silence of body, speech, and mind".
• No charge. Nothing to pay unless you choose to give afterwards.
• The same instructions at every course. "The teaching is given through recordings of S.N. Goenka," dhamma.org says, in English or Hindi with translation into a local language.
• One technique at a time. Other practices are set aside during the course, not to condemn them, the Code says, but "to give a fair trial to the technique of Vipassana in its purity".

Other formats suit other lives. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), developed at UMass Memorial Medical Center in 1979, is taught over eight weeks, and other traditions run shorter or self-paced retreats (below). Choosing by format, such as how long you can be away and whether you want silence, is a fair way to decide. The comparison table on the techniques page sets the traditions side by side.

If a 10-day course isn't right for you now

• Shorter Goenka courses are for old students. In Goenka's tradition, one- to three-day courses are open only to people who have completed a 10-day course, so for adults there is no shorter way in. dhamma.org's free Mini Anapana sessions use a recording of Goenka to introduce breath awareness, but attending one does not make you an old student. See Vipassana course types.
• Other traditions run shorter retreats. IMS in Massachusetts runs retreats "lasting from a weekend to three months", most of them designed for both new and experienced meditators. Panditarama Lumbini, in the Mahasi tradition, lets meditators book an individual retreat of seven days or more, with four interviews a week.
• Daily practice at home. IMS's advice to anyone not ready for a silent retreat ends: "Daily life practice may be more beneficial meanwhile." Breath awareness is a place to start: how to start Vipassana meditation gives first steps, and the site's meditation timer marks the start and end of a sitting with a bell. On a phone, Clean Pomodoro is a free Vipassana meditation and Pomodoro timer for iPhone and Android, with timers for ānāpāna sittings now and Vipassana sittings after a course; a gentle voice cue ends each one. Its calm and nature sounds are for study, work and rest, not for sitting.

Is Vipassana worth it for you? Questions to ask before applying

• Can you give 12 days without a phone, and stay to the end?
• Is there a health question to raise with your doctor and on the application first?
• Are you ready to keep practising afterwards? Keeping up the practice at home explains what Goenka's tradition asks of students.

Shorter answers on rules, cost and health are in the FAQ, and the centres directory lists where courses are held, country by country.