A meditation retreat rewired my personality — and the changes stuck
I did a meditation and it sort of changed my personality?
Ben Kuhn went on a Jhourney meditation retreat in March 2025 expecting little, having been underwhelmed by a 10-day vipassana course. Instead, after days of frustration, a self-made compassion technique unlocked something profound: a lifelong background hum of body tension vanished, and afterward his emotions ran 2–3× more intense. Most of it faded, but some changes held — his shame reflex became self-compassion, art moved him weekly instead of yearly, and he lost the urge to speed up podcasts.
The care and connection wasn't coming from some foreign love puddle; it came out because a bunch of psychic gunk had sloughed off and made it easier for the real essence of Ben-ness to shine through.