Joe Dispenza's 7-Day Meditation Retreat: My Experience & Review

hey what's up guys this is Stefan James from Project Life Mastery today I'm going to share with you my experience attending Joe dispenza's seven-day Advanced Meditation Retreat it's an event that I experienced a few months ago in Cartagena Colombia with my wife Tatiana and I want to share with you guys my experience and some of the benefits that I received from attending that event now maybe you're here watching this because you're doing some research about this event and you're already familiar with Joe and his work and you're trying to determine whether or not this is an event that you should attend or maybe you're someone that doesn't know anything about this or a follower of mine here on Project Life Mastery and you're curious to knowing what's the latest self-development thing that steppens up to and so this would be one of those things that I'm happy to share with you guys and just share with you guys my experience and some of the benefits that I've received now it was a few months ago since I did the event like I said it was in Cartagena Colombia I will say going into the events I did not know much about Joe and his work I've maybe watched a few videos of his I kind of knew of Joe but wasn't really a big fan and and didn't really dive deep into what he has to offer I decided to attend the event because I had two friends that had went uh I think maybe two years ago or so that went to it and they were raving about it they said how great it was and how much it benefited them for me over the last few years many of you guys know that meditation has been something that I've been integrating more into my life and getting tremendous benefits from it and so for me one of my objectives doing this event is I want to go deeper with meditation on I also want to be more consistent with it as well so there'd be stretches where I'll meditate every day and then other stretches where I'm not and so I thought this would be a great opportunity for me to go deeper in my meditation practice and just get different perspectives on meditation the benefits from it and to be in an environment you know we're seven days you're with a group of other people and there's no distractions or away from the outside world it was just an opportunity to really go deep and get momentum after the event for having a consistent and deeper meditation practice now also you know my wife Tatiana um was actually pregnant during the time she was about six or seven months pregnant so we also decided you know what let's do this now because it'll be a lot harder to do this once we have our baby our baby was born Lucas about two months or so ago and so we thought let's do this before giving birth and wow how amazing would it be for our son in the womb to experience his first seminar and meditation event I don't know what kind of benefits a baby could have from you know being in a meditation environment like that for seven days but I would like to think that only good things came from it just when the mom is calm stress-free just feeling love and positive emotions that that can only be good for the baby and cool thing was being at the event with Tatiana so many people came up to her women men wow it's so amazing that your baby is doing this with you because she had the big belly and everything and so um that was that was pretty cool an extra benefit for our son as well uh okay so um first thing I'll start is assuring how impressed I was with the overall production of the event I didn't know what to expect um you know uh you know well I will say uh before attending the event you actually go through some videos that you're required to go through before attending the event so when you sign up you get access to his Progressive Workshop which was like a four day event that he did that you could watch the recordings of and there's some meditations there so it does warm you up to the event and the experience especially if you don't have much experience meditating it's not an event that you have to be Advanced to do there's people from all walks of life all over the world one thing I was impressed by was how many people were at the event it was about I think 1500 to 2 000 people so I was really impressed by that I had no idea what to expect in that regards um just the overall production and and how it was put on and put together was really great really positive it was kind of on par with like a Tony Robbins type of experience level of production um and so there are people from obviously Latin America Colombia because that's where it was being hosted but there is a lot of people from Canada the US Europe Mexico Asia all over the world that were attending this event so it was just really cool to be in an environment with up to 2 000 different people of all walks of life meeting different people many of the people that we had met um that were at the event had been multiple times I met people that have been there seven times and obviously why did it keep going back is they keep getting benefit their life gets better and better and better every time they go so why wouldn't you keep going back if something continues to benefit you which is something I believed in because I've been to many seminars like Tony Robbins events multiple times I've been to has Unleashed The Power Within event I think eight times um because it just continued to benefit My Life um so the progressive Workshop you go through you're doing some meditations beforehand some really great content in that before attending the event but by no means do you have to be a meditator you could go to this event and through the progressive workshop and your experience doing this you'll go from zero no experience meditating to pretty experience you'll get a lot of value from it I think if you are someone that's brand new to this um the reasons also I'll just share why I wanted to go and what I wanted to get from it and reasons why I've been prioritizing meditation more in my life is through my journey of self-development is self-growth and achievement and success in my life I've largely programmed myself to have an overactive mind you know my mind can get quite busy and it's been useful to have an overly active mind to have a lot of thoughts because it's useful for planning strategizing uh always thinking ahead in your life and navigating you know avoiding challenges and anticipating things and you know making good decisions in my life and uh you know taken Massive Action towards things and so my mind has been an incredible resource that's helped me achieve a lot of things in my life but I was also able to recognize the detriment of that and how my mind being overly active would uh be missing out on really being able to experience the here and now the present moment and so I had a hard time just being being in my life just sitting and being and experiencing the incredible phenomena that's existing around me and just being in all of it I was always trying to escape the present to move on to the next thing the next thing the next thing always future oriented rather than being and enjoying and experiencing the here and now you know stopping to smell the roses was something that I struggled with and so meditation was a massive struggle for me something I resisted for years heard other people talk about it learned about it but I just always avoided it always was intimidated by it you know and that was largely because when you sit and you meditate without distraction uncomfortable emotions feeling Sensations can arise which a lot of people try to escape and avoid from from being busy all the time and distracting themselves and so I knew that this is something I needed to go deep with and that's why I've been on this journey for the last few years and so for me that was uh in alignment this event with exactly the deeper kind of work that I wanted to do okay now let's go back to the experience in the event production was great um one of the things that I really got from it and really enjoyed was how Joe presents his work how he brings a lot of science to meditation to explaining very complex complicated ideas uh for example uh you know he explains the neuroscience and the physical you know biological physical aspects of meditation and what's happening inside your body in your brain is explaining on a scientific neurological level how your brain is changing and rewiring itself and how the neurons uh that fire together wire together and how that's how we form these habitual patterns and belief systems and ways of being that we call ourself you know he has a great book called breaking the habit of being yourself because yourself is really just a series of programs that you've conditioned over a period of time and you believe is you but it's not really you because when you start to deprogram and decondition a lot of that stuff it opens up new possibilities for changing yourself to being and experiencing whatever form of life that you want to have or be your experience so I really appreciated how he explains that he's explaining how change occurs within the human being and it it was really appreciated because it explains how all the other self-development work that I've done all the other you know conditioning and neuro-linguistic programming all this psychology and different forms of therapy and psychology that I've learned how basically all of that is contributing and has contributed because I've made a lot of changes in myself over the years but what's happening inside you know the neuroplasticity of all of that which has been really fascinating so I really appreciated the explanation and how he breaks it down that anyone can understand it I also appreciated how he was able to break down and explain things like quantum physics quantum mechanics which is something that is kind of quite out there and there's different beliefs around how quantum physics is interpreted but you know he's kind of explaining it from the perspective of Law of Attraction how things can be manifested into one's life through the field Quantum field that was pretty fascinating and interesting because I've known about the secret and Law of Attraction and studied a lot of that stuff but I really appreciated his perspectives on that and then I'd also say the scientific explanations that he also was providing for a lot of Eastern philosophy mysticism um certain uh experiences where he was able to kind of demystify it and bring a lot of science to it so that you can kind of remove the religious Dogma from some of this stuff or the mysticism from it and understand physiologically what's happening in the body so one thing that's interesting to note is that he doesn't use any religious terms at this event he's not using God he's not using uh you know when he refers to what most people would call the chakra system uh he doesn't refer to them as that he calls it the inner energy centers of the body um you know while people at the event are having what an Eastern philosophy would be known as a Kundalini Awakening he doesn't use the word Kundalini you just you know doesn't even really have any uh he doesn't you know he calls it the pineal gland breath you know so he kind of has these different terms for things that previously for thousands of years were referred to as specific spiritual and mystical subjective events that people had and he's not referring to it in any form of religious Dogma just giving you the science and what's happening inside the body and making it very very practical uh so I'll get into uh you know some of that in a little bit but another aspect is in terms of the science is uh Joe's work has been studied by scientists for quite a while now in fact um he's partnered up with the University of California San Diego where they're studying the people that are attending this event and because they have thousands of people that are attending the events you're able to you know do some fairly significant studies I'd say the studies that they've done are still quite minor because I think to really do big conclusive studies you know they need to be tens of thousands of people which requires a lot of funding and whatnot but I appreciate still the research the studies they've done with hundreds of people or a thousand people but what they do is they they actually brought on a scientist from the University California San Diego on the first day and what he's doing he's doing a whole presentation and sharing with you what they've found they're sharing with you the science the benefits that people experience of doing this seven day event and it's amazing you're Blown Away by what it is that they've discovered the benefits of meditation um you're they basically did a lot of work showing how you know taking people's blood before the event and then measuring their blood after the event and seeing how their metabolites change sharing how their immune system changes uh you know sharing how just their overall health and physical well-being improves after the seven days and they've measured it and they've got you know studies to show that you know they've also done brain scans where they attach electrodes to the brain and they're showing people on day one who their brain waves are more in a high beta which is more stress or anxiety and then you're seeing after the seven days how their brain is changing the activity in their brain how they're more in a high alpha state so really fascinating to see the science because now all of a sudden the things that you're going to be doing on this seven day event he can share the benefits or I can share with you guys these benefits but it's not even me or Joe sharing the benefits it's the science the science shows these are the benefits and you can't deny that you know you are changing and you are going to be a different person biologically from day one to day seven and here's the science to support that so that is pretty cool that was pretty amazing to see because if you're someone struggling to meditate and now you see the benefits of science proving the benefits of this that it gives you another reason to meditate another reason to go deeper with this work because now you have more belief you have more uh references to support the benefits that you can get from meditating so that was a tremendous benefit just I really appreciated the explanations of things that I've learned about for years I've studied you know Eastern mysticism and philosophy and Buddhism and Hinduism and Tantra and I've had a lot of very unique experiences I've practiced a lot of these sort of things but now I'm getting a very scientific explanation of that and it is removing a lot of the woo the woo-woo and mysticism behind it that people kind of look at some of that stuff as Airy fairy it's just removing the religious aspect from it and just giving you the benefits of the techniques of meditation and this breath work as well so that was awesome now um the event at the event you're meditating I'd say anywhere from maybe six to eight hours a day which might seem like a lot if you've never meditated before might be intimidating um but I actually found it quite easy um you know you get to a place when you're meditating um where after the first few minutes you can get really deep and you just lose sensation and uh connection with the body you know it's like if you have back pain if you're uncomfortable if you have an itch and you want to scratch it whatever all of that stuff just kind of goes away when you're in a deep meditative State because you just feel so relaxed so calm that you just feel totally still and you lose any concept of time where hours can go by just like that and you come out of your meditation you're like wow like you just feel so calm so good and it's pretty amazing so um you're doing a lot of seated meditation some of the meditation you're lying down in the room um and then also you're doing walking meditations and the walking meditations were some of my favorite experiences because with The Walking meditations you have headphones on and you're listening to an audio meditation from Joe but you're doing it with like 2 000 people so here we are 2 000 people or so that are on the beach in Cartagena beautiful environment you know they have security and police and everything making sure people don't mess with us but to have an experience meditating outside with up to 2 000 people it's pretty amazing and I'm sure the people that you know were tourists not a part of the event that are on the beach looking at us like is this a cult or something because they're seeing people that are just you know like there for an hour just you know standing like this uh but part of the walking meditation is they're actually walking as well um and so you have your eyes open of course and you're you know you're doing a meditation and you're in a certain state which is a powerful powerful state so um that's kind of you know you're doing a lot of meditation obviously but it's also in between there's a lot of theory there's sharing things you're you're talking to other people that are around you uh your neighbors that you're sitting next to to debrief things and whatnot and the food was amazing you know that they provided for everyone as well really healthy food which is also really impressed by um so I'd say you know the meditations that we did were really powerful um you know one of my favorite meditations that we did is called blessings of the heart are blessings of the energy centers so basically you know our body has the chakra system that Eastern philosophy has talked about for thousands of years but you know you get into this meditative State a lot of the meditations you start first being in your heart there's a lot of science now that shows the brain heart uh connection um you can read the book called The Heart math by the heart math Institute so there's meditation showing that how your brain and your heart can go in coherence and become in sync um and so you start often the meditations in your heart and then from your heart you start blessing the different energy centers or the chakra system so your root chakra your sacrum you know your solar plexus your hearts your throat chakra your third eye your crown chakra as well as even the eighth chakra as well which some people believe is just right you know above the head the aura that we have um so that was a really powerful meditation and something that you're doing I think almost every day just really opens up the energy centers of your body and gets the energy flowing throughout your body um so that I thought was really powerful um and I'd say one of the other biggest benefits I've gotten from it is the breath work that you're doing and so almost all the meditations you're learning how to basically do a Kundalini Awakening he doesn't call it that he calls it the pineal gland breath and he breaks it down in a more scientific way so um you know if you study Tantra or if you've read maybe Montauk chia's work the multi-orgasmic man and tantraid you know you know mantachia's work and whatnot you learn how you can channel the energy from your root chakra all the way up to your third eye or your crown but also to bring that energy and bring it flow it back down and have it kind of recycle and go up and down throughout your body and by doing that in Tantra you can have orgasms for men without ejaculation so oftentimes when men have an orgasm they ejaculate and they're pushing the energy out but through this work you know which I've done a lot of work on through the years you can Channel energy up and you can have multiple orgasms which is pretty profound um and so he explains how the process works is that there's this cerebral fluid that is up along our spine and you can look all this up if you'd like but this fluid actually goes all the way up our spine to the pineal gland and flows back down and it does that twice within every 24 hours and so what you're learning to do is you empty out all the oxygen okay you're taking a big deep breath in but you're squeezing your sacrum your your um perennium you're basically the muscles that are in your genital area the muscles that if you were to clench you know down there you know whether you're taking a pee and you're trying to stop the flow of urine in your PC muscle where you clench and you hold it you know as well as your anus as well if you clench that as you're breathing up you can actually squeeze that cerebral fluid and you can bring it all the way up your spine to your pineal gland and the pineal gland has been known in the spiritual kind of community that it's believed that it releases DMT dimethyltryptamine DMT is something that people experience when they do Ayahuasca or you know the spirit medicine plant medicines or whatnot now there's not any conclusive science that supports that the pineal gland releases GMT however from what I've read even from any scientists they wouldn't be surprised if it does because people tend to have very mystical experiences when they stimulate the pineal gland it's basically where the third eye is um is you know is what people documented as over the last couple thousand years so you're able to bring this fluid up and stimulate the pineal glands and in doing so you can have some pretty profound experiences you can have orgasms you can have mystical experiences in fact one of the events or one of the days in the event you go to the event at four o'clock in the morning because the pineal gland releases melatonin which is basically what makes us sleepy and drowsy when we go to bed at night and so it releases melatonin but it has a peak of releasing that melatonin um I think from like midnight to four o'clock in the morning and so you're actually doing a meditation at four o'clock in the morning which is very early to be up with everybody that's there and through these techniques you're able to experience lucid dreaming okay which is something that he breaks down how that works and even something that's a bit even more out there which is known as astral projection so um there are some people that have those types of experiences I didn't but I did experience some amazing benefits from this breath work and the work that he does one of the things that he does during the event is he actually brings up maybe 15 people or so up on stage these are people that are Advanced at doing this work and you're watching them have a full-on Kundalini experience doing this breath work they practice it thousands of times they're showing you what it looks like and what's possible and that was pretty eye-opening because there's so much pleasure and Bliss like an orgasm that you experience like a like a prolonged orgasm that these people before they even go into the breath the brain anticipates the amount of bliss and pleasure it's going to experience and it already starts just you know feeling that energy and experiencing it which is pretty insane and so you are watching people have this experience where their whole body is just you can see the energy flowing throughout their body which is pretty incredible so some of that stuff if you're not familiar with any of this work might seem out there might seem strange it might even be unbelievable in some regards but it's been around for thousands of years so I'm not like for me it's not new I've been to many spiritual events and experiences I've known about this sort of work what I just appreciate about is how he's bringing the science behind it and making it very practical showing you how to do it um another aspect from the event and this is also out there too there's some stuff that can be a bit out there for someone that's brand new to this work but I think is worth exploring and having an open mind about um so one thing is at the event there are a lot of healings that occur spontaneous remissions spontaneous healings and miracles that occur um for example there's a lot of people that attend these events because they're at the end of the Rope you know there's people that have stage four cancer there's people that are in wheelchairs that are at the event there's people that are blind uh there's people that have MS there's people that a whole range of You Name It Whatever type of condition you can think of uh you know there's people that are there because there are people doing this work that have been healed from things and things that are miraculous have occurred I'm skeptical of of course however it's something that I'm always open to obviously miracles happen spontaneous remissions occur a doctor could say you have this much time to live and you know they end up living outliving that you know there's things that have occurred that I think we can all agree upon that are unconventional that are things that are you know miraculous types of events phenomena that exists that we have no explanation for in science um you know even doctors are blown away by some things that have occurred obviously there's been Miracles that have been reported through all spiritual texts and scripture whether that's the Bible whether that's the Quran whether that's you know uh The Vedas or whatever else there's always been Miracles that have been shared throughout you know these different religions um so we know about that but what Joe does he explains things um that more from the perspective and under and basically studying what a placebo is so everybody knows about a placebo you know there's people that have a certain condition they're a part of a study let's say and they take a drug a medication half of them do the other half they take a sugar pill you know or half of the people they do medicated injection the other half they do a saline injection you know they're they've done studies where half the group they get a surgery that's done when they're put under and the other half they get a fake phony surgery and yet there's a certain percentage of people that are given a sugar pill a saline injection or a fake bogus surgery and they heal as if the drug the surgery the medication worked and yet they were given nothing basically how how why like how does that work well that's the placebo you know science acknowledges the placebo but unfortunately there's not much research and studies into that phenomenon um so there's something there you know there's something to it when that the mind the brain believes accepts and surrenders to something completely and just 100 believes that I'm Healed or that this worked that physiologically the body heals itself or responds in that way so that's a really fascinating thing that unfortunately I'm not sure if science will ever investigate to the extent that I think it deserves because you know the way that I think a lot of the scientific Community works is that it's very expensive to run you know these big clinical studies and to have them peer reviewed and there's not that much money to be made by investing large sums of money into figuring out how the brain and the mind can heal the body versus big Pharma for example they'll invest billions of dollars into trials for drugs because you can make billions of dollars from that drug and so it's something that I'm just curious by and fascinated by um there are people that are healed there are people that have miraculous things happen at the event I can't explain it you know the placebo effect is an explanation for it I suppose and just the power of the mind and the power of belief so for me it's something that I appreciate and I'm very curious about because for me you know if I'm ever in a situation in my life God forbid where I'm at the end of my rope and nothing's working you know you resort to a miracle you resort to you know anything you're open to anything and everything that can help you and this type of work amongst you know many other things that I've done you know Ayahuasca for example people have spontaneous remissions people that were depressed or addicted to something heal like incredible things occur that's still unexplainable I appreciate having these as resources that I know that if it ever came down in my life I could go to this this and this if I was desperate and there's some hope so that's the way I kind of look at some of that work but um even though science hasn't proved a lot of this stuff there's still you know science can be quite slow and and is limited based on you know investing the amount of money to study something to prove you know you know it works or not if there's not Financial upside and Roi you can get from it I understand it you know I don't need science all the time to prove something I can have my own subjective experience as well as I do appreciate anecdotal evidence from other people in their experience because that supports what's possible in my own mind and a possibility that exists for me as well so um what more can I share I mean overall I guess to conclude this it was a great experience I enjoyed it a lot I would go back again I'd go back multiple times I got what I wanted from that event my life's been better having attended the event uh I meditate more consistently and still not as much as I'd like there are some days where I skip my meditations but that's okay I'm not super anal and rigid about things being a certain way it's provided tremendous benefit in my life it's supported my journey that I've been on um you know the breath work some of the things I learned is things I want to go deeper with practice and master just that pineal gland brat that's something that I really want to go deep with and you know master in my life I think that'd be pretty cool and all in all I'm just very impressed by everything um there's Facebook groups you can join that are you know Joe's students and they share their experiences and their benefits of his work um another thing I'll share too that was actually impressive at the event they're not selling you anything there's no pitch no sales pitch I'm impressed by that uh most seminars most events that you go to there's a sales pitch because it's too easy not to when you have a thousand two thousand people in the room these people are happy to buy whatever it is that you offer to them you go to Tony Robbins seminars or most seminars there's going to be multiple sales pitches because why wouldn't you you're leaving too much money on the table by not pitching and offering something there's none of that at the event um which I thought was pretty noble and pretty Integris that they're not just doing it to make money and there's nothing wrong with making money in fact I actually appreciate when there is a pitch because I'd want to go deeper you know whatever else Joe has to offer I'm I'm on board with it you know if it can improve my life why not so I'm okay if they're going to offer something to me and it costs money and it's you know something that I can accept and participate in great but they didn't do that so I thought that was pretty unique and pretty different compared to most other events because usually you make a lot more money by you know pitching things at these events um you know because putting on events is expensive as well so that was an interesting thing as well so that was my experience I enjoyed a lot I don't know if it's right for you or not that's up to you to decide but for me personally it was something beneficial Tatiana enjoyed it and got a lot from it as well I had some friends that have also done it and they all enjoyed it as well I think you got to go into it being open-minded you know don't be so close-minded and rigid and inflexible with things in your life just go and have an open mind participate fully and I think there's a lot of value in that work and I look forward to going deeper with this work as well um after that so thank you so much for watching hopefully this is valuable for you if it was give it a thumbs up subscribe for more uh here at Project Life Mastery and I'll see you again in the next video God bless you and take care

Channel: Project Life Mastery

Views: 14,124

Keywords: joe dispenza, dr joe dispenza, meditation, meditation retreat, meditate, spirituality, project life mastery, pineal gland, kundalini, stefan james, review

Id: 2lH5lndRn9A

Length: 34min 4sec (2044 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 26 2023