Peel the Onion Podcast by Olivia Maxwell

Why Meditation Kept Me Stuck — When Spiritual Seeking Becomes Spiritual Bypassing w/ Olivia Maxwell #24

Season 1 Episode 24

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0:00 | 12:09

In this minisode, Olivia gets honest about the loop she lived in for years - touching genuine bliss in meditation and returning to the same anxiety, the same inner critic, the same suffering every single time.

This episode names what nobody in the spiritual space wants to say out loud: that meditation without body safety can become its own form of escape. That going up and out can feel like healing while the nervous system stays stuck in the same patterns below.

Olivia shares why no amount of mental or spiritual practice alone can reach body safety and what finally changed when she stopped escaping and started inhabiting with the help of EMDR Therapy & somatic work such as Breathwork.

If you have done all the right things and still run the same loop - this episode is for you.

In this episode:

  • The bliss above, suffering below loop - what it actually feels like from the inside
  • Why meditation can reinforce dissociation rather than heal it
  • What somatic work, EMDR and breathwork reach that meditation cannot
  • The moment the bliss finally landed - in the body, in ordinary life
  • Why the goal was never to stop meditating - it was to bring what you find there back into your body and live from it


| Olivia Maxwell |

Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/awakened_mbs/

Website | https://awakenedmbs.com.au/

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