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Practice
The core practice of Vipassana as taught by U Ba Khin and S. N. Goenka: what it is, its aim, how it differs from MBSR's body scan, and where to learn it.
In Vipassana as taught by S. N. Goenka, and in the International Meditation Centres (IMC) of Sayagyi U Ba Khin's lineage, the main practice after the first days of breath awareness is the observation of sensations throughout the body. dhamma.org describes it as observing sensations throughout the body, understanding their nature, and developing equanimity by learning not to react to them. This page describes the practice and where it is taught. It gives no instructions: the tradition teaches it to new students only on a 10-day residential course, with a teacher.
On a 10-day course in Goenka's tradition, students spend the first three and a half days on Anapana, attention to the natural breath in the small area around the nostrils. From the afternoon of Day 4 the field widens to the whole body. The attention moves through the body in order, noticing whatever sensation is present in each part: heat, cold, itching, pulsing, vibration, pressure, tension, pain, or something too subtle to name.
Goenka's Day Four discourse explains why the order matters: "Any order may be followed, but an order is necessary." Without one, some parts of the body are neglected and stay "blind", while the skill being trained is to feel sensations everywhere.
After Vipassana is introduced, the three one-hour group sittings each day become sittings of strong determination (adhiṭṭhāna), in which students try not to change their posture. The course's rules, the recorded instructions and the midday interviews with the teacher all support the practice; see the 10-day course, day by day.
The practice is not a search for pleasant feelings. In the Day Seven discourse, Goenka warns that students may come to feel a pleasant flow of subtle vibrations through the body, and that the danger is to take it as the goal: "the purpose of practising Vipassana is not to experience a certain type of sensation, but rather to develop equanimity towards all sensations." Progress, he says, can be measured only by that equanimity (upekkhā).
The second aim is direct experience of impermanence (anicca). Every sensation arises and passes away. The Day Four discourse sums up the practice as remaining aware and equanimous, which it calls the way to emerge from suffering. U Ba Khin explained it in the terms of the Abhidhamma: matter is made of tiny units called kalāpas that arise and vanish almost at once, and the meditator attends to their constant change rather than to the anatomy of the body. The tradition also reads vedanā, the second of the four foundations of mindfulness, as bodily sensation. More on the teaching behind it: impermanence, suffering and non-self.
The tradition's own texts speak of moving the attention through the body "in order" and, later, of a "free flow" of subtle vibrations. Outside them, the practice is often described as sweeping: Spirit Rock Meditation Center says U Ba Khin "formalized the vipassanā technique of sweeping attention through the body", and scholars use the same word. "Body scanning" and "body sweeping" are informal names; this site uses them only for convenience.
Goenka's final discourse of the course says there is no secrecy in Dhamma and students are welcome to tell others what they learned, but that they should not try to teach the technique: before teaching, one must be mature in the practice and trained to teach. Anyone who wants to learn should join an organised course led by a proper guide.
There are practical reasons too. The course introduces the practice only after days of concentration, in silence, with a teacher to answer questions. dhamma.org warns that old symptoms may resurface during or after a course and does not recommend it for people with significant mental health issues. For what can go wrong on intensive retreats, see difficult experiences on meditation retreats.
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), the secular programme Jon Kabat-Zinn developed in 1979, has a practice called the body scan. A 2019 paper by the scholar-monk Bhikkhu Anālayo in the journal Mindfulness traces its history. Kabat-Zinn wrote that one of the people who influenced his version had been an aerospace engineer before he became a meditation teacher. Anālayo identifies him as Robert Hover, a teacher in U Ba Khin's tradition, with whom Kabat-Zinn first trained in 1973.
The two practices share a root but are not the same:
| U Ba Khin and Goenka | MBSR body scan | |
|---|---|---|
| Setting | 10-day silent residential course | Weekly classes over eight weeks (UMass programme) |
| Posture | Sitting | Usually lying down |
| Before it | About three and a half days of breath awareness | Introduced near the start of the programme |
| The breath | Not attended to during the practice | Some guidance includes sensing the breath in each region |
| Stated aim | Equanimity towards all sensations; direct experience of impermanence | Awareness without reactivity; relating differently to pain and stress |
Anālayo sees the lying posture as a skilful way to make the practice accessible to people in pain, and notes that the body scan is not merely relaxation.
Goenka taught that the technique was kept in its original form through a chain of teachers from the Buddha to U Ba Khin. Scholars read the history differently. Anālayo, citing an earlier study, writes that sweeping through the body in this way cannot be traced in the early discourses. He also quotes the scholar Erik Braun, who found that, as far as he knew, Ledi Sayadaw never made such a claim, and that neither Saya Thetgyi nor U Ba Khin put so much stress on a perfectly preserved technique.
Anālayo does find a possible precedent: a Chinese meditation manual compiled by Kumārajīva (344–413) reads the third step of mindfulness of breathing, "experiencing the whole body", as awareness pervading the body to the toes and fingers. Goenka also explained that step as feeling sensations throughout the body with the breath. Anālayo suggests Goenka's claim may be read as referring to contemplation of impermanence in general, which the early discourses teach often.