Resolve IBS and IBD Naturally
This podcast is for you if you are struggling with symptoms of IBS and IBD and want to get to the root cause of your symptoms so you can take back your health through a holistic, whole-person approach.
Resolve IBS and IBD Naturally
Episode 59: My Week at Dr. Joe Dispenza's Advanced Retreat: Insights from the Quantum Field
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Courtney shares her transformative experience attending Dr. Joe Dispenza's advanced retreat and how it deepened her understanding of the mind-body connection for healing chronic conditions.
• Six-day intensive retreat featuring 38 hours of meditation
• Foundation in energy work and Chinese medicine provided helpful context
• Dr. Joe uses quantum physics to explain how we create our reality
• Human perception limited to approximately 1% of all reality
• First three days challenging as nervous system adjusted to intensive meditation
• Spontaneous joy emerged by day four without external triggers
• Emotional releases common during retreats as participants process trauma
• Experience reinforced determination to continue meditation practice
• Post-retreat benefits include less anxiety and greater self-awareness
• External circumstances reflect internal subconscious programming
• Mind-body approach offers healing possibilities beyond conventional medicine
To check out Dr. Joe Dispenza’s meditations and retreats:
If you're struggling with IBS or IBD and feel trapped by your gut, you're not alone. Get my free guide "IBSD and IBD Relief: A Three-Step Solution to End Bowel Urgency and Loose Stool" by clicking the link in the show notes below.
Link to a free 30 minute Gut Check Call
Disclaimer: None of the content discussed is meant to be taken as medical advice. All information presented is for educational purposes only and listeners and viewers assume all responsibility around implementing any changes to their health and medical regimen.
Podcast Introduction
Speaker 1Welcome to Resolve IBS and IBD . Naturally , I'm Courtney Cowie , a nutrition therapy and functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner . If you are struggling with the symptoms of IBS or IBD and want to get to the root cause of your symptoms so you can take back your health through a whole person approach , this podcast is for you . Just a disclaimer that the information I'm presenting in this podcast is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as medical advice . You should always consult a qualified practitioner before making any changes to your health or medical regimen . That being said , let's get on with the
First Encounters with Dr. Joe Dispenza
Speaker 1show . So today I want to talk a little bit about my experience attending a Dr Joe Dispenza advanced retreat , which has been about six weeks ago now , and I've debated about whether or not I should wait to record this episode or whether I should record this episode at all , and I erred on the side of actually going ahead and just sharing some of my observations and my experiences , since I've had that week long retreat experience and I feel like this will be helpful to you if you're familiar with his work and you've gone down the rabbit hole and you're thinking about doing a retreat in the future . But I also feel like this will be helpful to you . If you've never heard of Dr Joe Dispenza , it might spark some interest and , if anything , it will get you thinking about your own health challenge , potentially from a different perspective . That could offer you some insight and help you get that next step of the way .
Speaker 1So just to set the stage , I don't remember exactly when I first encountered Dr Joe's work . I believe I came across one of his earlier books many years ago . But I do remember several years ago in my work as a body work therapist , having a client come into my brick and mortar office who was a very self-growth oriented guy , very passionate about learning lots of things , and at the time he was in the middle of reading Becoming Supernatural by Dr Joe Dispenza . So he was very excited about this book . He was talking about it with me . So he was very excited about this book , he was talking about it with me , I was listening to him and I was getting excited and I left that day with this thought okay , I'm gonna download that book and I'm gonna listen to this because he's got me interested enough that I wanna know kind of the full book . And so I consume a lot of books and podcasts , driving and walking and just taking care of tasks in the house cooking that type of thing and so I downloaded the audio book and I listened to it over the next several weeks and it did prove to be very inspiring .
Speaker 1There were lots of really mind-blowing stories in there of people that had gone through his method and used his tools to completely restore their health , and even so , complex and unthinkable conditions that you know would never be ever thought to heal from a conventional medical perspective , these were folks that were able to overcome these limitations and pretty much fully restore their health , and so that was hugely influential and just very profound for me . And I remember thinking , okay , this guy is on to something , I'm going to get his meditations and I want to try some of this and just see how this goes for me . And so at the time and this is still true he's got a lot of his meditations on his website that are available for purchase , and so I went and purchased some , downloaded them , started doing some of the work and , like most people on a path of trying mind-body tools , it was very up and down for me . There'd be periods of time where I would get reinvigorated and want to get on that meditation bandwagon and I'd work with this meditations for several days or a few weeks , and then life would get busy and I'd sort of fall off . And that was kind of how it went for , I would say , several years , up until more recently , and I'll kind of get into that in just a minute .
Speaker 1But before I talk about just the advanced retreat and my experience , I want to set the stage in that , prior to reading Becoming Supernatural , I had some advanced training in a system of body work that is very much predicated on understanding and learning how to work with the energy field around the body
Energy Field Training in Bodywork
Speaker 1. And this was training I did many years ago in the Chicago area with a practitioner who was very skilled in an area of Eastern body work that was called quantum shiatsu , and I myself was trained in Chinese medical massage or tuina , which is similar to shiatsu but a little bit different . Both of those body work styles use Chinese medicine and the meridians or the channels that run through the body , which are pathways that are deeply studied in Chinese medicine , to help restore energy flow and balance in the body , which can then impact a number of things , whether that's body pain , headaches , energy a lot of different things , right ? So it's basically body work based on Chinese medicine principles , similar to how acupuncturists would apply needlework based on those same principles , just using hands in the case of body work versus needles in the case of acupuncture . And I remember going to that training initially a little bit dubious that I would be able to even do it because I wasn't trained in the foundations of shiatsu . But I did have a good understanding of Chinese medicine and the channels and various acupressure points and so , as I was going through that shiatsu training with the practitioner who was teaching , who was a very skilled shiatsu practitioner , really enjoyed training with him . He had a great capacity to apply that work and see significant change in the clients that he saw in his practice and was also very good at trying to explain what would be considered , I think , a very esoteric and hard to understand framework , you know , for helping people overcome blocks and limitations in their body .
Speaker 1To us , as you know , bodywork practitioners learning this , which is not easy to do , right , because we're kind of talking about , you know , these pathways that are invisible . We're talking about this energy flow , which is called qi in Chinese medicine , which you really can't see . It's left to kind of using your own development of sensing this energy and your own intuitive capacity to kind of connect with what might be going on in the other person's body , and it's like anything the more you kind of practice and conceptually try to understand and then apply what you're learning , the more you feel you actually get it , and the more you can kind of see the dots connect as you're working on a person on feel you actually get it , and the more you can kind of see the dots connect as you're working on a person on the table . But I'm sharing this to say that this entire experience was really foundational to giving me an understanding of this idea that we are more than just our physical bodies . We are more than just what we can see and feel right in the world around us , and Chinese medicine , just in general , is also very much predicated on that idea , and that understanding is infused throughout it through the study of the channels and acupressure points and being able to manipulate energy flow in the body through whatever means right .
Speaker 1And so what was very interesting , though , about this training was that the teacher actually helped us develop a capacity to , with either very light touch or even within a way of sort of assessing the space around the body feel into that field , if you will , and assess what might be needing work or what might be needing some sort of balance and support . And a big part of the preparation for stepping up to the table and working with the client lying there waiting to receive the work was actually doing an ongoing daily process ourselves to keep that intuition sharp and to increasingly deepen that capacity to feel into that space and actually make supportive actions , supportive movements that were going to actually help restore balance to that client's body . And so from the very beginning , when I was doing this bodywork training , we would actually do a lot of standing meditation practices and techniques that would work with helping us develop this capacity , mentally speaking , to hone our focus and then spatially focus within that area that we were actually standing . And so that was the first time I had really had that kind of experience and that kind of instruction of literally being in my physical body and then practicing putting my mental focus or my consciousness in an area outside of my body and really focusing there , and I thought that was really novel . It was , of course , very challenging , but what was awesome about this training was that over the course of time we would continue to practice it more and more , and we kept kind of upping the ante or adding on to these different techniques so that you got better and better at actually understanding how to use mental focus and spatial awareness to tune into the space around you and then apply that to the space around the body of the client that you were trying to help , and so that really gave me a framework for understanding this idea of being more than just the physical body and having a way to consciously connect into a space around and outside of my own body in order to feel the movement of energy or , in a sense , nervous system to nervous system , connect with another person , right ?
Speaker 1And so this is really important , because one of the guiding principles of Dr Joe's work is that all of us are , first and foremost ,
Quantum Physics and Reality Perception
Speaker 1energetic beings , filled with information and frequencies , possibilities , which comes from this original source , energy . Whether you call that God , whether you call that the divine , whether you call that source , whatever you want to think of that as it's this infinite creative power that is beyond our own human capacity to actually fully understand . Yet , at the same time , the spark of this power lives within each one of us because of the fact that we are spiritual beings . Right , we have this energy life force running through this , which , again , chinese medicine calls qi , is really using that understanding , then , to train your mind , to try to connect into this field , which is outside of space and time , which contains all of this frequency and information , and literally hone the focus in to the information and or the frequency that you want to connect with , to actually bring that into reality . And so there's a bit of the work that is resonant with manifestation in the sense of , you know , our thoughts holding energy and literally holding the potential to bring something into being right on the physical level . But it's actually more than that too . There's an intentionality to it and there's this recognition that all of what we are connected to in our outer world is actually very much being generated from within , whether we understand that or not , both consciously and subconsciously . And it's kind of a wild concept .
Speaker 1And one of the interesting aspects of going on an advanced retreat is that Dr Joe does a good job of infusing a lot of validating information into his lecture . So it's a combination of doing meditative practices as well as having him talk on different topics and basically give lessons on these different concepts to help understand why it's important to try to focus the brain in specific ways , why it's important to use these different techniques or applications within the meditative context to inevitably arrive at the result that you're trying to arrive at . So for a lot of people in the room , it's often restoring full function , health of the body . For others , they might be there because they really want to make a big change in their life , right , but the point is he's very much a fan of using science , especially quantum physics and theoretical physics , to give validity to what he's saying , to really make this like inarguably true , and so that , I think , is really a super helpful context because , again , the unifying language most of us can understand is being able to observe something and repeat the outcome again and again and again , and that's really the science of things . Right , it's observing principles that hold true , you know , time and time again , and then using that to help explain why things happen .
Speaker 1And so one of the things he spoke about that I found really interesting is just the idea that you know all of our reality functions very similar to a hologram , and he even showed , you know , information or research backing this up that has been done on , you know , recreating holograms by taking light and , say , filtering it through solid particles and then reconstructing or deconstructing backwards , kind of the image that's formed . And every single time you can see that what our eyes are perceiving , in a sense , is really a refraction of what's being projected from within . And so , without going too deep into this topic because , again , this is not something that I'm fully in expert knowledge of , but I understood it enough to know that the interesting part about what we experience in the world is it's very much a reflection of how our brains actually are interpreting the reality around us . And the other interesting thing about this is that you know , really , when you think about the spectrum of frequencies and even things like the light spectrum or the sound spectrum , right Like , as human beings we really can only perceive like a very small percentage of all of those possibilities in terms of frequencies . Or , you know , sounds , right Like , we know even that dogs are able to hear at a higher frequency than we can . And to that end , it's really crazy to contemplate that our actual , like physical , outward experience of what we can see , touch , feel and hear is limited to something like 1% of all reality . And so , in understanding this , it really kind of digs . This big rabbit hole of what is reality right , like that becomes the question that you start to ask yourself when you go deeper and deeper into understanding how quantum physics works and looking at how to create change from within , from this level of the brain and this level of the heart and Dr Joe goes really deep into explaining a lot of these concepts in his advanced workshops Right , the fact of the matter is it definitely becomes a pretty deep rabbit hole that will inevitably butt you up against your own beliefs and understandings of yourself , of what you think is true , and make you question , essentially , a lot of what you're experiencing day in and day out in your life .
Speaker 1And I think where this inevitably becomes challenging for certain people is if you are very attached to a certain way of understanding the world , certain beliefs and perceptions about yourself , certain beliefs and perceptions about your external environment , and how much control you have over that . How much of that is related back to you and a reflection of you as an individual or not . That will sort of dictate , I think , whether you really resonate with his work and want to go deeper or you hit sort of a point where it feels too challenging to really comprehend or maybe just too out there and hard to wrap your head around , right Like I kind of see people will split both ways . And so you know , in my world and just kind of how I'm wired as a person , I fortunately feel like I've had a good degree of introspection , curiosity for life , exploration of different tools and techniques , even as a bodywork therapist , and just in my own life experience that I've really kind of gotten to a point where I'm able to , I feel , to a certain extent , question almost everything in a good way , and so this was very helpful .
Speaker 1Going into the Dr Joe retreat and having that experience with using my spatial awareness and consciousness to , you know , apply that to helping people in the body work context , really served me well in doing a lot of the meditation techniques that he was teaching at the advanced retreat . Um , so , going into the retreat , I definitely decided to get more diligent about practicing the meditations and I think it was a good three to four months straight I did a meditation every single morning to try to build that muscle of focus , knowing that we were going to be , we were going to be doing a lot of them on the retreat and I do feel like that was helpful and I feel like the process of being a daily meditator is very much an up and down type of thing , and he even said you know years he's been doing this . He has days he's able to get into the zone faster and days he's not . I think that's true for most people
Retreat Experience and Challenges
Speaker 1. So if you're listening to this and you have been dabbling with meditation like I did for many years and it's kind of been an on again , off again process , I want to encourage you that just showing up and giving it your best effort every day is still going to reap benefits for you and it's not like you're doing it wrong if you've been at it for a long time and you have lots of days where you feel like you're struggling with it . You know there's a lot more to say there , but I'll just leave it at that . And it is like exercise , where I feel like the more you do it , the easier it gets to dedicate that time and at least sit with that experience . Not that it's always easier to focus the brain . That's very much going to be dependent on day to day and what's going on , I think , for most people in their life Now in terms of just going into the retreat and the experience of the retreat , I did not realize that it was going to be close to 38 hours of meditation over six days .
Speaker 1So I will say I am extremely proud of myself being able to hang in there and do that and , honestly , not have a lot of fear and anxiety about that either way . Going into it , I knew it would be a lot , but I didn't really have a specific number that I was aware of and , that being said , it was stressful , I felt , to my nervous system to go from my regular day-to-day life , which is generally pretty busy and packed and has a lot of things , you know , a lot of plates spinning . Um , I do feel like , like a lot of people , I struggle with the monkey mind type of situation where it is kind of hard to take a breath and feel like you can ground yourself with all the things going on , that normal state to going into a space where the only real important task you're focusing on is learning the information Dr Joe's teaching you and doing the meditations . It was almost like a night and day difference , and so it took me a good three days for my nervous system to adapt to that difference in the environment and difference in focus and I felt like there was a lot of internal battle in terms of just sitting in those meditations and wrestling with my own capacity to focus and try to do what I'm trying to do internally with my mind . And again , I think a lot of that is really normal . I think a lot of people in the room were struggling with that exact same situation , and that would be true even just for , you know , shorter meditations that you're doing yourself at home . But , you know , imagine going to a retreat where you might be doing three or four meditations in a day . It's like , you know , almost a boot camp at that point .
Speaker 1So those first three days were a little bit rough in terms of just feeling like my brain was a little bit off . You know , obviously I felt quite sluggish and tired and I think a lot of that was just trying to really recruit resources to do something with my brain that I wouldn't typically do . But it wasn't . It wasn't an experience where I felt like I was being super challenged to the point that I couldn't hang in there . I definitely was getting through it and having no problems getting from start to finish with the meditations , in the sense that I had to get up and just leave the room . I was able to sit through and complete everything and I felt really , really good about that . I couldn't even go for a walk without planning my bathroom breaks . If you have ibsd or ibd and feel trapped by your gut , you're not alone . I used to plan my life around bathroom breaks until I found a three-step solution that finally worked to get my free guide ibsd and ibd relief . A three-step solution to end bowel urgency and loose stool . Click the link in the show notes below .
Speaker 1Um , now it is very much a schedule throughout the week where there's fluidity to the process , and he even , jokingly , will say that he really tries to operate a little bit outside of time and space , which is the quantum model that he teaches , in order to allow for the free flow of information . If it takes him a certain amount of time to explain a concept , he's going to take it . If he's guiding a meditation , there's some degree of fluidity there too . It's not like everything is fixed and set in stone , and so that was a little bit of a stressor as well , physically speaking , because although we had two main meals a day and some snack and tea and coffee breaks in between , there was always this unknown of when the meal was going to happen . And , you know , for a pretty structured , disciplined person going into experience like that , there were there inevitable times where the body would get hungry or we would maybe be eating and we had only eaten two or three hours ago , and so , again , you had to really work with yourself on releasing some of your own structure to be able to get through that week with more grace and ease and flow . And so that was another piece that I felt was just really interesting to kind of observe and experience .
Speaker 1You know , going through that week-long retreat , I will say that it took me probably a good full three days , and by the fourth day , that was when I really started to notice , as I was sitting in one of the lectures , like this spontaneous sort of bubble of happiness or joy come up , and that was really profound . Right , like , again , not trying to have any specific expectations , and I think that is honestly the way to approach one of these experiences . If you choose to do it is to go in with an open mind , be as flexible as you can , be as open as you can and willing to just give everything your honest , best effort . You really can't do any better than that . And the more you attach to anything kind of as he teaches and as I found , the more it tends to elude you . So I will say , by the fourth day I wasn't really having any expectations because other than to get through things and just give it my best effort , because I already knew how tough the first three days were .
Speaker 1But I do remember sitting in a lecture and having some of that spontaneous joy come up which was really interesting to observe . And then the next two days I had more and more of those moments . It would kind of ebb and flow and I felt like , interestingly , in the meditation practices themselves there was less of that , mainly because I think I was quite focused on trying to , you know , specifically do what I was trying to do in those meditations and more kind of the things would come up and sort of surface in the in between . So that was a really , really interesting shift to experience . During that week long retreat and then even leaving the retreat and going to the airport and kind of waiting for my plane to take off , I just had such a sense of like feeling good within my body , right to the point where I was a little bit kind of in the zone and I was working on some stuff waiting for the plane to board and almost kind of missed that they had started boarding the plane . I was , I was kind of missed that they had started boarding the plane . I was kind of that in that flow and that feeling state of like , yeah , life is good , I'm feeling good . So that was definitely a very profound shift and I feel like for the first week I was back , there was a lot more of that sense , you know , just inside of myself , compared to my normal day-to-day life .
Speaker 1Now I will say , like , obviously , transitioning back to the hustle and bustle and the hamster wheel , so to speak , it would be a challenge for anyone to maintain some degree of control over this inner state that you're creating in the meditative experiences , even as you're navigating your day-to-day life stresses and challenges and things that come up right . I do want to just talk a little bit about a piece of the retreat experience that I do think is really important to understand that , again , having some experiences in different body work trainings gave me a little bit of a preparation that other people might not have had going in , and that's the fact that a lot of these retreats , have a lot of people attending them like upwards of , you know , 1500 to 2000 , and you know , people of all walks of life , all types of experience , all backgrounds , presumably a lot of various traumas that people could have experienced over their lifetimes in that room
Processing Emotions and Post-Retreat Insights
Speaker 1. Right , and just by definition of what you're trying to accomplish with these meditative practices , it's very likely that people in the room are going to be in a state that things could start to move , whether that's stuck emotions , whether that's stored memories that they're not aware of , that are attached to some of these traumas . In the right conditions , in a safe environment , if the brain and the body is willing to release that stuff and process that stuff it's going to come up , is willing to release that stuff and process that stuff it's going to come up . And that is definitely something that did happen over the week that I was on my retreat . And when that happens , obviously people are releasing emotions .
Speaker 1There's , you know it can sometimes sound a little bit chaotic and I think it's important to know that going in that you will likely be experiencing that , potentially yourself , but also just as an outsider , you know , aware of that , in the room as you're doing your own meditative process , right , and so it can be . It can be a bit of a challenge , right , and it can definitely be hard to stay focused with that going on because it inherently becomes a bit of a distraction . But you know , from the way that Dr Joe and his team approach this , obviously they want to support people to make these changes and release these things in a healthy way , which is often going to come with some degree of emotional release , and to that extent they will often allow that , unless they feel that somebody is doing this inappropriately , you know , in order to be a distraction . Typically that's not what's happening , but just something to know . Because I think again , people who that may not have had a lot of experiences in settings where there's trauma work being done , you know that could be a little bit uncomfortable and maybe push them past their point of what they feel they can handle right , and so that for me again was just helpful having the bodywork context , because I've obviously seen this on bodywork tables in different bodywork trainings I've done this wasn't anything new to me , but I had never been in a room with that many people before doing something like this , so maybe the magnitude and the number of people that were having these experiences was a little bit new to me .
Speaker 1But I do think going in it's helpful just to know that because you know again , if you're going to take the time and the effort and invest resources to go do a retreat , I think it's a good idea to kind of understand what to expect and what you're getting yourself into Now , kind of where I'm at post retreat six weeks out . So I will say that that entire experience has reaffirmed more deeply and solidified my determination to stick with his model and his meditation practices as a foundational aspect of making positive change in my life and continuing to improve the health and functioning of my body . That I was 100% sold on and reinforced on at the retreat experience and came back with this very determined feeling that this is going to be a lifelong tool for me , unless I find something better , which I have not yet to date . But I don't see how , even if you know there were other tools that came available I really , really appreciate and find value in his process . And so you know that still is true , even six weeks out , conscious of how different situations or different relationships are giving me information about myself at the subconscious level , which is really important , because so much of where we are blocked and where we are stuck in our lives is at the level of the subconscious that we're not aware of consciously . And again , if you go through his methodology and you listen to him lecture or you take one of his courses or you go to a retreat , you will really understand this concept . But everything that happens in our outer world is constantly giving us feedback about our own internal state in our beliefs and our thoughts on some level , and in a lot of these things are very subconscious , and so being able to actually look at situations that are coming up that feel challenging or triggering or stressful have now become opportunities for me to actually take a step back and say , okay , interesting that that happened . What is this telling me about me ? Right , like that has become a much easier process for me to actually see for myself after the retreat and I think to that end , it's just increased self-awareness and deepened my ability to self-explore on that level . Now , obviously , this is always a work in progress and I feel like this is a type of path that just gets continually deeper and deeper . It's not like you go to one retreat and you have all of the tools and all of the answers . I think it really is like peeling back an onion , and every experience and every effort you make gets you further down that track , but there's always more fruit to be harvested from that process , right ?
Speaker 1I definitely notice on a day-to-day basis having a little bit less anxiety or a little bit less uncertainty maybe is the right word . I know , prior to going on the retreat , a lot of what was coming up in the beginning with my daily meditations was this sense of just feeling very unsettled or feeling like there's sort of this background anxiety or worry constantly churning that I wouldn't be aware of until I was in the meditation and literally trying to not think about anything right and being very focused on the here and now . That is less , and so I think there was a deeper sense of peace that kind of , was sustained coming out of that experience , and maybe a lot of this was also coming from a deeper understanding of the model of reality which takes away some of that anxiety and that fear that can come from just not having that understanding . So hopefully that makes sense and I feel like this is definitely an experience that I would love to do and plan to do again in the future . It is very intensive , it is a big commitment in terms of time and energy and , of course , resources as well . And to that end , you know , I I don't know that people would do something like this more than once a year at most , but potentially right .
Speaker 1But I do feel like a lot of it is just continuing to apply the methods and practice the techniques on your own and sort of using the week-long advanced retreat experience as a launching pad to deepen what you're attempting to do in your own home
Final Thoughts and Recommendations
Speaker 1practice and also just reinvigorate it if you feel like you've gotten to a place where it's gotten a little stale or stagnant , which again , is very common for all of us on a spiritual path or on a path of truth seeking , on a path of deep personal development , right , so so it was really excellent . It was really excellent , it was very challenging . There were a lot of ups and downs . I met some amazing people .
Speaker 1Um , I had , I think , the right experiences that I was meant to have on this retreat and it stretched me as a person and I think it helped give me a different layer of understanding of myself that I'm hoping to incorporate into my work with others as well , and I guess , in closing , I would just highly recommend opening yourself up to that type of experience if it works for you and at a bare minimum , just looking into Dr Joe's work , reading one of his books , I feel like , like I said , it's either going to resonate or it's going to feel like this is maybe too much of a stretch for you , which is okay too .
Speaker 1So much of the journey of self-evolution , I think , is about timing and it's not to say that if you're not open to something now , you couldn't be down the road , and that's for all of us , right . There's certainly areas of my life I've had to go back and re-examine and change my mind on , or you know different tools that I might not have really resonated with years ago that resonate now and that's the beauty of the path like just being open to what presents and knowing that you're going to be in a different place continuously right . Did you find this episode informative and helpful ? I'd love to be in a different place continuously right .