COULD MEDITATION CURE COVID?
Back in July I had the opportunity to attend my ever first retreat with Joe Dispenza in Colorado which is kind of crazy considering how long I've been leading retreats. On that retreat I had many breakthroughs and it was truly a life-changing experience.
One particular day stands out. I was feeling a bit more introspective and not feeling like I wanted to interact with anyone else, I just wanted to be in my own space. As fate would have it, there was one break between meditations where I felt really pulled to introduce myself to a lady sitting next to me and the conversation that followed led me down an incredible path.
It just so happened that despite there being people from all corners of the world at this retreat, this woman lived about 20 minutes from me in San Diego. I had already started to think about starting a Dr. Joe meditation group in San Diego when I returned home. I wanted to connect with other people passionate about this work, doing deep dives into meditations some as long as four hours.
As it turned out, this lady was already a part of a Dr. Joe Dispenza meditation group and invited me to join. Fast forward a few months and I've been a part of this group and some truly incredible scientific discoveries. We have been able to do healing meditations for people both in person and remotely, those people have reported reduction or elimination of heinous diseases like cancer and some have reported having no pain in their bodies after years of struggling.
I was introduced to Dr. Joe's lead scientist who is based out of San Diego and does his lab work at UCSD. Our meditation group has been studied by Dr. Hemal Patel’s team and what they’re discovering is going to “create a huge splash in the scientific world.”
Recently Dr. Hemal published a blog that went out to the hundreds of thousands of Dr. Joe followers. What Dr. Hemal and his team are finding is that for people consistently practicing meditation there's a direct correlation between increased immune activity and a decrease or even elimination of disease in the body. Dr. Hemal and his team were able to create a pseudo-Covid virus in their lab and by studying the blood of the experienced meditators in our meditation group, discovered that in fact yes meditation does offer significant protection for various diseases including Sars-Covid-2. They are currently working towards a cure for covid studying these blood samples and have high hopes they are well on there way to finding one.
I've become highly passionate about both breath work, meditation and also doing cold therapy in the past two years. The changes and the shifts that I've seen not just in my physical body but in my intuition and my ability to manifest and draw in experiences, people and opportunities into my life has been nothing short of astounding. My vision has become so clear and the right people and opportunities continue to present themselves.
Our retreats have always been an invitation for people to step out of their day to day and to go into deeper understandings of their own internal landscape. Whenever we can support the work that we’re doing with measurable science and results, the benefits only multiply. I've always done my best to try to remove any of the dogma or the tradition in teaching these practices not because I'm not grateful for how they have been passed down, but because I am a healthy skeptic and want to be able to quantify what I'm practicing and most importantly what I'm teaching to others.
Many of you may be familiar with Wim Hof and his incredible feats of climbing to the top of Mount Everest and a pair of shorts or running a marathon Namibian desert with no water. Wim has been studied extensively by the scientific community and that research has dispelled many of the beliefs once held in the medical community. Most notably that our autonomic system and immune system are not able to be impacted or changed. For lack of better understanding, we were thought to be stuck with what we had been born with, that the environment was signaling our genes and we were victims to our surroundings.
The study of epigenetics began in the 1940’s and has suggested that it is actually possible for the gene to signal the environment. That we are actually able to change ourselves on a genetic level and even at the level of changing our own DNA. Wim Hof has gone so far to be injected with E. coli virus along with other test subjects and while others showed signs of sickness and deteriorating health, by practicing breath work and meditation, Wim showed no signs of sickness.
It's not hyperbolic or “woo woo” to say that these practices give us super powers and it's probably more appropriate to say that we have super powers waiting to be unlocked. Like any other practice these techniques require a good teacher, time and consistency. The science of change suggests that in just four days we are able to see significant changes in the body and mind. Personally I have seen drastic changes in our retreats and the feedback from guests supports this.
We have seen people heal from paralysis in their bodies, they have experienced less disease and shorter periods of sickness from viral infection and bacteria, they have kicked addictions and toxic habits. It even goes so far as people making huge life changing shifts and decisions feels “easy.”
It has been gratifying on an extremely deep level for me coming from a background of being highly stressed as a television producer in New York City to be a part of this change. I tell people my baseline of beginning this journey was as beginner as beginner gets and that if I can do it, anyone can. I worked long days, constantly worried about messing up and put plenty of toxic things into my body along the way. It’s not that I don’t work hard anymore, I just work the hardest on myself and staying in an elevated state.
I'm in the process of continuing to follow my dream going all in with retreats planning to run one retreat a month throughout the course of 2022. We are also expanding our retreat offering to include seven day retreats for people to do a deeper dive and understand these practices on a whole new level. Dr. Hemal has even offered to come teach us about his findings!
We will be bringing in other teachers and healers, teaching modalities such as Reiki and energy healing, hypnotherapy, sound healing and much more. I also continue to be a huge believer in a whole food plant-based diet, not necessarily going vegan as that is not for everybody and is a privilege, but to share the science and the benefits. Personally, since my journey into plant-based eating in addition to these other amazing healing modalities, I have not had a doctor's visit or even anything resembling a cold or flu going on six years (knocks wood)
I am forever curious about ways that we can dive deeper into the self to find deeper levels of joy that don't require us to reach outside of ourselves for substances or that depend on other people. Everything that I share on my retreats I share because it's something that I've experienced and has had a profound effect on my well-being, my ability to feel joy and the skill of shortening periods of suffering in my life.
As I'm able to see the benefit of these practices my attention immediately turns to how I can share these with others no matter where they are on their wellness journey. These practices are not overly complicated and shouldn’t be. I strive to teach in a way where people can take these things back into their lives and fit them into their schedule and their budget. We've received a LOT of feedback that people share the practices with their families and loved ones. That ripple effect continues to grow and grow.
I am infinitely grateful that this community continues to expand and evolve with each retreat we run. We have had guests take trips together after meeting on retreat, start highly successful business together, leave bad relationships and even follow the JQ playbook of leaving corporate life to pursue their passions. I currently have a roommate who was a former retreat guest. He left his finance job in New Jersey and moved to San Diego, we’ve literally become very close =)
My vision is to continue to create a safe space for people to come into community and feel fully supported during and long after they leave. Guests share deeper parts of themselves on retreat than they have with loved ones or even spouses and leave feeling lighter and freed from beliefs and emotions that have held them back, sometimes for decades.
At the very least coming on retreat means getting a biological upgrade. By moving away from your known life and coming together to practice breath work, meditation, yoga, cold exposure and eating well at the very least you'll receive this upgrade, and that's on the lower end. On the high end these retreats really do have the power to change your life.
I used to wonder if I would ever be comfortable saying or writing that because I didn't know If I truly believed it but now it is not coming from me, it's coming from the hundreds of guests that we've been able to host and serve.
If you're reading this and think our retreats could help you in some way or could help somebody that you love in some way I would love to chat with you about it.
Even if it’s not a retreat that is calling out to you, I would love to support you in your wellness journey any way that I can. It has been profoundly true and clear to me that the more I give the more I'm able to receive.
These last two years have been quite challenging when you consider that the base of this company that I started revolves around travel and getting people together in groups. While the execution has a time been unclear, I've never wavered in the knowing that this is my purpose, my dharma. It is something that I will continue to pursue for many many years to come.