I also went on a Vipassana 10 day retreat. The first was wonderful. On the second, though, I had so much trouble (physical and family) at the time, in my life, that I just couldn't quiet inside, the whole 10 days.
At the end, the person leading the retreat - who had obviously seen this - asked me how I was and what I thought.
I told him (as near as I can remember), that these were body sensations and mental sensations going on. I noticed them, and let them happen, and kept gently pulling my mind back to quiet, whether or not I was successful, and without anger or upset, just gently repeating as long as it took.. which was in the event longer than the 10 days I was there, it would seem.
Sometimes it's easy to perceive it in a mistaken way. The inner still and quietness of meditation flows from not being attached. It isn't a cause of not being attached, or even really a requirement to achieve it. It may not help to seek a kind of "proof" of some kind that you are "correct" or that you should be attached to "good" and "bad" marks from some teacher-figure or inner critic in your mind.
You don't actually need stillness to be meditating (although certainly it's hard to realise this without experience!). You are what you are, you cannot not be that, much like there cannot not be weather in the atmosphere or sensation in a living mind. "This too is just a thought... this too is just a sensation... this is a breath happening..."
Pause. Know these things, and understand these are also truths. If your body fidgets, your mind scurries, your anxieties trigger and your stress happens, thoughts pass, you can say "aha", and focus on the real truths that they show (as all things show) - that these things are sensations... these things are not "you"... these things arise... and - if you watch them, they also fall away. This is what sitting teaches - but you can see it without sitting, as well.
When you see that this is the nature of sensation, and the nature of mind, and you watch without attachment, it is the difference between anger and upset, and equanimity and acceptance. Perhaps you have a mind that is hard to rein in, a mind that circles around to judgments of inferiority and incapability, a mind that finds stillness hard. Then - let it! Do not become trapped in the trick that, in trying to reach detachment, your first action is to get attached to that which is in your way! Notice your mind is doing these things.. as it has before.... as it surely will again... and see it gently as it is. Your mind is in circles, but - you are not. You can pause, and rest outside that mind.. outside that circle of frenzy suffering and attachment.. outside attachment... and watch that this is what your mind does. How curious! I wonder what it will do next? Oh look, it's trying to rope me in! Remind yourself, 'This is watching of a mind at play', and bring yourself back to equanimity, not belief..... focus on what mental sensations are happening down there and not on going there or believing in them,. See how soon one unpleasant sensation follows and leads to another, like a reel unwinding.
When you feel drawn in, remember about watching, and settle yourself, and watch with equanimity, that this is what your mind seems to be doing. But you need not follow it or succumb to its temptations to indulge and go there yourself. Watch, be still, notice, and see mental and physical sensations of your mind, like so much cotton candy/candy floss, pass you by......
If you succumb, one time, a dozen times, a thousand times, that's also just a sensation. When you notice you did so, don't attach, just resume watching how sensations play out - inferiority, thoughts about what you "must do" or "should have done", anger, distress.... notice how they flicker across. Meditate on their passing, their rising, and their vanishing, rather than engaging with it. In this way, you take what you heard in Vipassana, and you bring it into your own life.
