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Live in a superlative-laden city like Dubai - with the biggest malls, the highest skyscrapers, and the best selection of international food, clothes and nightclubs - long enough and it is easy to get exhausted. Add a couple of years working in stressful, fast-paced tech startups and minimalism would start becoming attractive to you too. There is a growing need for human-centered experiences in an age of digital distraction and information overload, which explains why people are turning to meditation as an antidote to excess. That is how I found myself burnt out, quitting my exhausting job in Dubai, and signing up for a Vipassana course in Sri Lanka. Vipassana a strenuous ten-day meditation course with total disconnection from the outside world, where you agree to abide by these precepts: no killing, no stealing, no sexual activity, no intoxicants, no writing, no talking, no eye contact. Easy enough, I thought to myself as I handed my personal possessions over. The last person I spoke to during the course registration confessed that this scared her more than a trek up Mount Everest. Then we took a vow of Noble Silence. Waking up at 4am to a fixed timetable of 10 hours of meditation every day was a drastic change from an endless cascade of notifications, emails and meeting alerts. With nothing to do except meditate in the witchy early mornings, meditate in the leisurely afternoons where the sunlight danced on the floor, and meditate once more to the sound of crickets chirping outside, I painfully discovered the lost art of spacing out. In stark contrast to the multitude of options I had before, now there was only one thing to look forward to each day: modest meals of red rice with lentil curry, potato curry, chickpeas and grated coconut, sensory delights in an otherwise drab sea of sameness. There were forty of us at this course, a curious bunch of twenty-somethings dressed in white caftans and billowing cotton shalwars, some with feathers braided in their hair. Is this a meditation retreat or rehab for people addicted to visiting Coachella? I found myself yearning to speak to my fellow meditators, ask them questions about how they were finding the practice but I couldn’t. I took the visual clues they offered me: tattoos, hairstyles, T-shirts with the word Om embroidered on it, and created characters for the movie I was composing in my head out of lack of better things to do. Vipassana teaches us to focus on the breath and to start observing our physical sensations as well as our thought patterns. When you have been not doing much except concentrating on the triangle of breath on your upper lip for three days, you become painfully aware of each passing second. That’s when the real work starts. Time slows down and you become hyper-aware of your anxieties, fears, and psychological set-backs without a soul to talk to. It’s a one-sided therapy session with no way to escape. You peel back layers of dread, unease, and repressed memories to see what’s hiding under the blanket, and yearn for a chance to wipe the slate clean and start over, knowing fully well that you cannot. This deep-dive into the vagaries of the mind can prove to be distressing, which is why there is a high-drop off rate at Vipassana retreats around the world. I did not last more than four days. Taking a leap into the unknown is not for the faint-hearted, but traveling can become even richer when you embark on a journey of self-preservation. Meandering through the interiority of your mind, trekking through the inner landscape, even gallivanting through the geographical contours of your thoughts can be the most exhilarating trip you can take. By doing so, I learned how to recognize the trappings of success, observed how pain and pleasure are fleeting sensations so it is futile to focus too much on one or the other, and most importantly, began appreciating the value of slowing down in a world where technology is accelerating faster than our imaginations can keep up with.