Antonio is a returning guest. You might enjoy checking out some of his previous sessions — #324, #312, #311, #304 — in the archives.

ABOUT ANTONIO

While born and raised in Spain, Antonio Egea now lives in Taipei, Taiwan with his family.

At the moment, I am a stay-at-home father taking parental leave from my job. My two-year-old daughter is my lovely and ruthless Roshi!

He credits his hobbies for leading him to a taste for mindful awareness.

I owe a lot to my hobbies. Weiqi 圍棋 helped me to discover Asia and allowed me to travel a lot. Learning Chinese helped me to come to Taiwan. The martial arts of WingChun 詠春 helped me to begin integrating mind and body through auto-move, and in 2013, I started meditating with my KungFu instructor. I also felt a strong pull to study Chinese calligraphy and tea ceremony. When my meditation was advanced enough, I realized that all of these pursuits were very similar at their essential core.

In 2019, he participated in a Goenka-style Vipassana retreat, which presented him with the challenge of integrating quick and deep change.

That retreat changed my life, I see now that it accelerated the path that I already was in. For a few months afterwards, especially the first weeks, I had a lot of trouble—fear, panic, paranoia, and even some hallucinations. But thanks to my wife, reading about such phenomena and direct advice from people, including Shinzen, I put myself together again. I received many insights but still today it is difficult to separate the reality from the fiction of what happened there. A strong sense arose from the experience that following this path was the best thing that I could do with my life. From there, only good things are happening and I want to share that. I see my life developing in a more clear way. I lost all that fear, which was about living. I am not afraid of the future.

Antonio learned about Shinzen via YouTube many years ago, and has since completed the Unified Mindfulness Foundations program. He shared a bit about his current practice.

I love the See Hear Feel In family. My main practice is to let things arise and work with whatever comes up—usually emotional body sensations, which I tend to feel very strongly. When something arises that is challenging to dissolve, Do Nothing helps me to unblock it, letting "that who knows very well how to meditate" take control.