6 Life-Changing Lessons from My First Joe Dispenza Retreat
And Some Things I Was Not Expecting to Experience
Deep in meditation with 2000 people, I heard screaming from three directions in the large auditorium.
I sensed the loudest scream coming directly from the row ahead of me.
I felt stunned. Confused. And wondered if someone needed CPR.
Dr. Joe Dispenza kept guiding the meditation over the microphone so I decided to sit still and keep my eye mask on knowing that my eyebrows were raised and furrowed behind it.
Maybe this was normal for these events?
The meditation ended, lights went on, and we all lifted our eye masks.
The lady that was screaming in the row ahead of me was crying.
But this wasn’t normal crying.
This was crying in ecstasy.
Literally the happiest person I have ever seen in my life.
I am talking 10X more than those lottery winners you see on T.V.
In her euphoria and full of tears she kept repeating “I couldn’t help it… I couldn’t stop it..I am just so happy..I love you all.”
Now couldn’t we all use some of this ‘pill’ in our lives?
WTF happened you ask?
Good question.
The screamers had activated their pineal gland, experiencing a full-blown mystical awakening right before our eyes.
Let me explain.
At the retreat, we practiced guided meditations designed to unlock deeper states of consciousness.
The cornerstone was the Breath Meditation Technique.
The goal of this mediation is to use to use the power of your breath and abdominal muscles to push your spinal fluid up your spine (like sucking up a straw) to put pressure in your head to activate the tiny crystals on your pineal gland.
The pineal gland, often called the "third eye," is the body's inner radar. It connects us to unseen frequencies and energy fields.
Here’s the science:
The spinal fluid exerts pressure on crystals inside the gland.
This pressure polarizes the crystals, creating a magnetoelectric field.
Like a radio antenna, the pineal gland starts tuning into frequencies all around us.
.
All vertebrates have pineal glands.
Think birds and turtles: they navigate through migrations flawlessly without Google Maps. They are using their pineal glands for that extra sense of perception.
The session went one step further and Joe Dispenza had students from his program come up on stage and model the Breath Mediation for all of us who hadn’t reached the level as the few in the crowd.
He provided the disclaimer that no one was going to experience any pain with what we were about to see.
Yeah, it was a WILD sight.
A few minutes into the meditation the students were shaking vigorously.
It looked like non-stop full blown seizures.
Witnessing this removed all my skepticism and I actually felt inspired to work on myself to achieve the same sense of connection to the universe.
Joe Dispenza stated that this process takes work and has to be done regularly to build the discipline and experience a breakthrough.
And let me tell you, I’ve been practicing this meditation—it’s tiring! No screaming in my meditation room yet, but I’m optimistic. Maybe I’ll break into a funky dance move soon.
Here’s a step-by-step for the Breath Meditation Technique (repeat to your tolerance during each sitting):
Just as he healed his spine and defied doctors who said he’d never walk, Joe Dispenza has sparked a global movement of self-healing and empowerment.
At his retreat, I met people from all over the world with miraculous stories inspired by his teachings. I know this was the first of many retreats for me.
This retreat was jam packed with information but here are 6 key insights from his work that could transform your life too:
1. 90% of Your Thoughts Are Recycled from Yesterday
Same thoughts → same choices → same life.
It’s not the universe, your boss, or your in-laws keeping you stuck—it’s your mental loop.
When you keep replaying old thoughts, your hormones, genes, and reality stay stuck on repeat.
Literally. You keep expressing the same genes in your body so experience the same outcome.
To break free you have to:
Stop blaming others.
Stop making excuses.
Stop wallowing in self-pity.
As you work on recondition your personality, your personal reality has no choice but to follow.
I do this this actively by catching repeating thoughts that don’t feel good, telling them to buzz off, and replacing them with something that feels better.
When you feel better your body chemistry will create the changes to improve your field of attraction.
2. Don’t Wait for Abundance to Feel Abundant
Once you’ve started catching and replacing those repetitive thoughts, it’s time to take it a step further
Your brain doesn’t know real from imagined.
A 2004 study by Meister et al. found that imagining playing the piano activates the same brain regions—motor and auditory—as physically playing, showing the power of mental practice.
So you need to:
Visualize the life you want, not as a wish but as a reality.
Feel the emotions as if it’s already yours.
When you align your mind and emotions with your desired future, it doesn’t just attract abundance—it guarantees it.
3. Slow Your Breathing, Slow Your Brainwaves
When you slow your breath, you send a powerful message to your body: We’re safe. We can heal now.
This simple shift moves you out of the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) into the parasympathetic system (rest and restore).
Here’s how to tune in:
Focus on gratitude and elevated emotions.
Let your heart open, creating coherence between your heart and brain—a scientifically measurable state that enhances emotional resilience and supports physical healing.
In this space, your nervous system calms, stress evaporates, and your body becomes a magnet for abundance.
Coherent energy amplifies your ability to heal and manifest your desires.
Sounds cliche but this totally works!
I incorporate slow alternate nostril breathing allowing breath movement with one nostril at a time only by blocking the opposite (in right side, out the left, in left, out the right).
5 minutes of this works like a charm to reduce anxiety as it starts to creep in.
4. Mentally Rehearse Your Future
Visualization isn’t daydreaming—it’s deliberate training for your brain. As mentioned above with the piano study.
When you mentally rehearse your ideal future physical changes emerge:
You create new neural pathways.
Your body begins to "memorize" what that future feels like.
Make it a daily practice. Fall in love with your vision, and it will fall in love with you.
Change your personality → Change your reality.
5. Your Heart Is an Energy Amplifier
The heart’s electromagnetic field is 100x stronger than the brain’s.
Tap into it to catalyze what you want in life.
Here’s how:
Close your eyes and focus on your heart.
Feel the energy growing and rising to your brain.
Breathe deeply and picture the future you desire.
As your brain shifts into alpha waves, you unlock creativity, connection, and a direct hotline to your goals.
6. Stress Keeps You in Survival Mode
70% of people live like this:
Energy drained.
Focus narrowed to problems.
Disconnected from creative possibilities.
Stress literally shrinks the electromagnetic field around your body, cutting you off from the unified field—the space where all possibilities exist.
The less stress you carry, the more aligned you are with this field. And the more aligned you are, the faster you can manifest your desires.
The lesson here is you have to actively do things to reduce your active stress: breathing, meditation, switch your thoughts, exercise etc.
This Wasn’t Just a Retreat—It Was a Rewiring
Dr. Joe’s retreat wasn’t hours of silent meditation.
It was dancing. It was music. It was transformation.
I left feeling rewired, reconnected, and recharged.
My reality and perspectives shifted and I have been using his teachings to create things in my life that I prefer.
Dive deeper into process of taking the drivers seat in creating your life and nab my FREE 6 day course to learn how.
The aw-ha for me was "slow your breathing to slow your brainwaves" - the very state that not only taps into the parasympathetic system but the alpha and theta state - the states where you can tap into the subconscious.
Thanks Sirah for this very educational post! The 7-steps breathing technique that you described above, how do we know if we did it properly? What are the success (or lack of success) indicators?