The Transformative Power of Meditation: A Personal Journey

If you have ever been curious about meditation and wanted to try it yourself, are interested in learning about different types of meditations, or are a seasoned meditator and want to hear about a fellow meditator's journey - this episode is for you!
There is incredible power that lies in silence and stillness, and I embarked on a transformative journey for the last 10+ years that led to self-discovery and helped navigate big life changes. As your host, Nina Elise, I invite you to join me as I share personal experiences about my meditation journey, marked with challenges, breakthroughs, and profound transformations.

Remember how daunting the thought of sitting still and quiet for a couple of minutes, let alone hours, seemed? Well, I do. I threw myself into a journey of meditating every day for two hours, navigated the rough terrains and high tides, and came out on the other side with wisdom and revelations about myself. We will explore various meditation forms, my experiments with the Triple Flame app, and a riveting 3-day silent meditation experiment. These practices, all unique in their ways, have helped maintain a steady meditation journey.

Finally, let's explore the subtle shifts meditation can bring into your life. Like the butterfly effect, these small shifts can create significant changes. Drawing from my experience with multiple forms of meditations, I share how meditating one to two hours daily has led to transformative periods in my life. What started as a challenge ended up molding my personal and professional life, proving that the time you invest in meditation isn't as important as the quality and intentions set forth in your practice. Join me on this enlightening journey, and let's explore how meditation can transform your reality.

Joe Dispenza Meditations: https://drjoedispenza.com/
Transcendental Meditation: https://www.tm.org/
Short Pauses - Free Triple Flame App: https://genekeys.com/resource/the-triple-flame/
Insights from a 3-day Silent Retreat: https://www.instagram.com/p/CvhZs9as5-p/?img_index=1
Where I learned to meditate in Columbus, OH: https://columbusktc.org/
Kyle Cease: https://kylecease.com/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to the Receptive Impact Podcast. I'm your host, nina Elise. Hello, hello. For anyone who is interested in meditation or are just kind of getting into meditation, or maybe you've been doing it for a while and you're curious to see how other people are meditating or other types of meditation that are out there, then this is the episode for you. So in this episode I'm going to take you through how I got into meditation and the different forms of meditation that I have tried and the ones that I have found that are working for me in this moment in time, and kind of take you through the journey of like the highs and the lows and you know, when I stopped doing it, when I started doing it, what shifted, what changed, how I changed, and just to give you an idea of what it is and to kind of release any misconceptions about it or stigmas or like fears or ideas of like how it should be, because there are, honestly, so many different types of meditations and ways to meditate and there's no like honestly right or wrong way to do it, unless you're like doing a specific meditation, but, honestly, at the end of the day, it's your intention behind why you are meditating and that is what you're going to get out of it, which is why I believe that there are, like you know, a lot of different types of meditations that you can do. That will work for you or somebody else and may not work for somebody else, because it is the underlying intention behind it and what you're looking to get out of it and like who you are and where you're at in your life. So, to get started, I just want to give you this background of like.

Speaker 1: 1:44

In my 20s I'm 35 now I think it was like my early to mid 20s, I was just kind of starting on this like spiritual path of seeking something different and really starting to come out of my shell, and not really realizing at the time, but just knowing that there was something more to life than just like working my job, being in a relationship, eventually going to get married and have a house with a white picket fence, like all of that stuff. Just there was just like this stirring inside of me. That was like this is not enough, like this is this can't be the end, all be all. And so this curiosity is what led me to bigger and bigger things. And so, in my mid 20s, I started to I don't know exactly how I was introduced to meditation, but maybe it was from going to yoga classes and sitting more in that stillness and it helped kind of like prep me to be more open to the idea of meditation. Basically, it was when I lived in Ohio.

Speaker 1: 2:37

I went to this I think it was like some Buddhist temple or something in downtown Columbus, ohio, and I just I wanted to take a class on the weekend to learn about meditation, the origin of it, the roots of it, and to understand if I was meditating correctly at home, because I started to meditate at my house and because I heard about all these benefits to it. So I went there and that was kind of like my first introduction to like more of the traditional sense of like this is what meditation was. And I went to a couple other like events and meditations that they had there, like walking meditations, and I participated in that and experienced that and it was really fun to experience. And the way that I work is I typically like watch a video or go immerse myself in something and get a feel of like how to do something, and then I kind of go do it my own way, and so this is how it was for me with, with meditation, and around this time period I had gotten really into I don't know if you're familiar, if anyone is familiar with the comedian Kyle Seese, but he was kind of like comedian turning into like the spiritual, like speaker, and I ended up going to one of his events and I'm trying to remember the exact timeline around this, but basically right before I went to go, I went to one of his events.

Speaker 1: 3:57

I had set this like these challenges up for myself where I was like, okay, I'm going to stretch for five minutes every single day and I'm going to meditate for five minutes every single day from month and I'm going to see what happens. And this was before I got into yoga and I was like, not flexible, and so I would like literally stretch for five minutes every single day, like you know, when I was watching TV or just like sitting and hanging out with with my partner at the time that I was dating and living with, and then I would meditate, I think when I would get up in the morning. And after that I went to a Kyle Seese event and in that event it was like the three or four day event in California had flown out. For that there is basically like this challenge that was presented to us. That was like, okay, I'm going to do these things that could have an impact on my life, and if I don't do them, then I have to go do something that I really don't want to do.

Speaker 1: 4:41

So I think at the time I was like I'm going to meditate for two hours every single day, and if I don't do this every single day I think it was for like 30 or 60 days because it's something to do around, like the time period it takes to implement a new habit or something, and if I didn't do it, then I would have to go eat like a Big Mac meal on McDonald's, and that was like so awful and terrible to me, like I couldn't even comprehend it, because I was like so into my health and like taking care of my body, and so every day I showed up and I'd meditate before I go into work in the morning. If I couldn't do the full two hours, like all at once, I would split it up into like 15 minute time increments. So I think at the time I would actually go into the bathroom at work and I would sit on the toilet and meditate for 15 minutes and that was like how I got my meditation time periods in for that one or two months that I was doing it and I didn't realize it at the time, but it was like I was basically setting myself up to become more comfortable with being in that stillness. And so after I did all of that, it was like really profound for me and during that journey it was like something started to shift within me. I was starting to shift and change. I was starting to see where I was out of alignment with my job and my partner at the time and around that time period I realized that, like, the partner that I was with was not for me and so I ended up ending that relationship after I had started meditating for two hours every single day. And that was kind of like the beginning of meditation and the effects that it had on my life, because it was, like you know again, I didn't realize it at the time, but like getting in that stillness, it was like I was tuning everything out external and I was starting to kind of listen to the whispers of my heart, the whispers of my soul that was saying, like you know, you're ready to move on to the next level. You have something bigger. You have a bigger mission and this is not where you're going to ultimately land. And obviously it's hard when you're dating someone for three, four years and you're in this relationship for the song and then you realize you wake up one day and you're like this is not, this doesn't feel right anymore, and so that was a really big leap for me that my introduction to meditation really helped with, and so my journey after that I started to get into more like structured types of meditation where I wasn't just sitting still and just trying to silence my mind.

Speaker 1: 7:06

So my dad actually introduced me to someone who is into transcendental meditation and I remember sitting in the parking lot of Whole Foods. We met up at Whole Foods and I got into his car and he taught me transcendental meditation. He didn't give me the actual mantra, because with transcendental meditation you basically you go through this like weekend or maybe it's a series of weekend, I can't remember because I actually did the training but you're given this specific mantra that you cannot repeat to anyone else, you can only use it in your meditation. And he gave me a word that was different. That's actually a mantra or like a chant that's associated with the lower chakras. So we sat in his car for like five or 10 minutes. He showed me what to do with my hands and how to sit, and like we sat there and we just meditated in his car and it was like my hands felt like they were floating. It was like so cool. It was such a cool moment to experience to have this guy who was teaching me how to become more still and start to shift my attention from my mind into my actual body, and that wasn't something that had actually been taught to me before.

Speaker 1: 8:07

Once I started doing that, I committed to doing transcendental meditation every day, twice a day. So I'd meditate for 20 minutes twice a day and I would do it in the morning and then I would sometimes do it at work or after work. And I stuck with it for months and months and months and things really started to shift for me. I believe I met the partner that I was in a relationship with for like five or six years around that time period and I ended up leaving my job and moving to Florida during that time period. Like all of these shifts kept happening, basically, and it was because I was doing transcendental meditation.

Speaker 1: 8:45

And then, when I moved to Florida. I went and actually did the training with the actual like I don't wanna say the company, but whoever runs the whole transcendental meditation. I went and did the training and got my mantra and everything and it was honestly like a really sketch experience. Like the people looking back on that experience, the people were not kind, they were not open. It was just like vibrationally it was like not a match. But I was pushing through it because I wanted the certification for it and it honestly like really turned me off to that type of meditation. So I actually stopped meditating like a month after I did that training and I didn't meditate for a while. I actually went through. I lost my job. I really struggled for the following year and I wasn't meditating during that time period. I was like really really depressed.

Speaker 1: 9:33

And that was when I got into like plant medicine and then I had my cousin introduce me to someone who was part of self-discovery, which is kind of like, kind of like landmark or like the self-improvement, like course or like community, and I hired a coach and she basically taught me like present breath awareness and I learned how to use my breath in conjunction with sitting still and allowing emotions and things to come up, without trying to attach anything or attach any meaning to it, and learn how to like sit with that. And so that was something that was really helpful for me and that next stage, to kind of like become more aware of my body, to become aware of my surroundings and to kind of go inward and be more in tune and in touch and aware of my actual body and to use my breath in conjunction with that stillness and that meditation. So, while that's not, like you know, exact meditation to me as a form of meditation, and around all this time period in my late 20s, I was learning different types where I learned how to sit and just observe my thoughts and not do anything with them. There were times where my I would want to come to complete stillness in my meditation. So when thoughts came up, I would just bring it back to a central point which would either be my breath or I would like literally just have like this black screen in my mind where I would come back to that, where there would be like nothingness, and so I would experiment with these different types of meditations and they were hard, like my mind was crazy, it was all over the place, and I'm sharing this because meditation isn't necessarily like easy. It's something that you have to train yourself and it's this process of coming back to yourself and going into deeper and deeper layers within your body to bring out how open you are, and it actually helps open you up more and become more tapped in and tuned into yourself. And so as I got older, into my 30s, I'm doing other types of meditation, like moving meditation, which can literally be anything like yoga was meditation for me, where I would allow my mind to wander during class without attaching anything to it and then have releases at the end in the form of crying or shaking or whatever.

Speaker 1: 11:44

And you can meditate when you're gardening or when you're like going for a bike ride or just any type of activity that basically clears your mind. Like that is a form of meditation. And so those are all like different ways that you can approach meditation and you can meditate from anywhere from one minute to five hours if you want. And I think it really is just asking yourself like where do I wanna start and what is my intention with this and what I get out of it, and so all of these different meditations that I have tried to me when I choose to meditate, it's I have that like experience with all those different ones, and so it's like these tools and a tool belt that I can reach into and say, okay, today I'm gonna focus on my breath, or today I'm gonna sit in stillness, or today I'm just not going to move my body and I'm just going to be here and not try to change anything. So I think it really depends on your intention and when you start to tap more into yourself and to your intuition and what you feel is best for you, that is how you're going to know, like, what is the best meditation for me in this moment.

Speaker 1: 12:46

So recently I have been getting into just in the past year. So I've come across contemplation and I've heard of it before but I didn't really understand what it was. And when I really got into Jean Keys, I moved through the Venus sequence with that and I learned the art of contemplation from Richard Rudd and this has probably been the most impactful form. I don't wanna say it's meditation, it's kind of like an in-between of like meditation. So it's not like you're just sitting there and like turning your mind off, because it's basically like almost like this active meditation, of like you can do this whether you're sitting in stillness or you're moving or going about your day. You can contemplate it anytime that you want, and I'm including this in this episode because I still feel like it's been incredibly beneficial for me and where I'm at in my journey with my thoughts and connecting with my body, because contemplation is the art of basically allowing things to come up in your mind and being the observer of it and saying, okay, like this is coming up in my life, how can I be a neutral observer and let it play out without attaching to anything or feeling triggered by it, and then allow the answers to naturally unfold over time.

Speaker 1: 14:01

So it's like you literally don't have to do anything except for observe something in complete neutrality, which is actually a lot harder than it sounds, because we have all these triggers in our life and if we're gonna sit down and we're like, okay, I'm gonna sit here and I'm gonna sit in contemplation about Suzy and she really ticked me off because she did this and this and this, and it's like you're getting lost in the attachment of like what that means to you, when in reality, it's something you can sit in contemplation with and just say, huh, suzy did this, okay. And then it's like you're going for a run five hours later and it comes into your mind and you're like huh, suzy did this. What does this mean? Can I look inside of me and maybe look at? Maybe this is actually an old wound of mine and this is why I am attracting this type of person and this type of behavior into my life.

Speaker 1: 14:45

And it's like over time, the more that you sit in or that you're in contemplation with something specifically, you're able to go a little bit deeper, and normally, with contemplation a lot of things that I've contemplated on it's like it normally just brings everything back full circle to me in order to resolve these things and bring it back to more of a deeper connection to myself and a place of purity and sovereignty within myself. And so, if just sitting in stillness seems really intimidating to you, contemplation might be another route for you to go down, and something that I'm currently doing right now is I use the Triple Flame app. It's something related to Jean Keys, richard Rudd is the creator of it, and basically you can sit in meditation from anywhere from one minute to 10 minutes. It can be guided, you can have music in the background or have ohms in the background or it can be silent and you get to choose your time of how long you wanna meditate and then you can set timers on your phone and the way that they say to do is every three hours on the hour, because you know the power of the threes and all of that. And what I really enjoy about this is like they're described as like a series of pauses, and so it literally takes you out of your head at different times during the day and puts you back into your body. I just do it for three minutes. Anywhere from three to five minutes is what I will do a couple of times a day. I don't hit it every single three hours. Sometimes I'm missing it or whatever. But the beauty of it is is you can do it when you're driving. You don't have to have the app, it's just like a reminder to basically pause and just say, okay, where am I feeling tense in my body? Where am I in my head about something? Where can I come back to myself? And it's almost like you're training your nervous system to just relax and to tune out the external and not take things so seriously and put your attention on worry or like anything and it calms you down and it brings you back to the state of like okay, everything's okay, and over time it just gets easier and easier and easier. So I wanted to share that. This app it's called the Triple Flame app is what I use and it's free has been really helpful for me and I think it would be really helpful for people who are just getting into meditation and they just wanna like, test it out or try it out.

Speaker 1: 16:54

And, lastly, I will most likely do a completely other episode on this, but I did a three day silent meditation in my home. I didn't go anywhere and do this because I feel like you can do this anywhere. Yeah, you can go somewhere and get guidance if you're new to this or if you feel called to do that. But for me it was just more of like I'm just gonna do this on my own and I set my own rules. And it was again just kind of like following my intuition of like being like I need to tune everything out externally and I need to sit with myself, because there were some pretty heavy things that were kind of looping in my mind over and over for very long periods of time and I was like I just need to kind of like battle this out with myself, and that was kind of the intention behind sitting in silence and sitting in meditation. So basically, I was meditating for five to seven hours every single day for three days straight.

Speaker 1: 17:42

The rules that I had for this was like there were no clocks. I had no idea what time it was for three days straight, which was totally like like a whole nother experience and is actually like integrated into my everyday life of not being so controlled by the clock. But I would wake up and I would meditate for an hour and then I would juice. I only ate fruit and I juiced and I wanted to have my body like not have as much like pressure on my body to digest like heavier foods. I wanted to be more like a purification process. During that weekend I couldn't consume any information in any way, so, whether that's through hearing something or reading something, I couldn't speak and I just sat in silence and I did yoga and I went for walks, and that was what I basically allowed myself to do for a three day straight.

Speaker 1: 18:27

And so when I decided to do this, I chose different types of meditations. There were meditations where I just sat in stillness where, if my thoughts went crazy, I would just come back to that place of stillness. Another meditation that I did for one or two hours was just sitting and allowing my thoughts to run wild and not trying to do anything with them. And then another meditation I would do an hour long meditation during the day where I just didn't move my body at all. So it was teaching you not to basically have instant gratification, where you're like, oh, you have an inch on your nose, well, not in this meditation. Like you're basically teaching yourself to be like you know, everything is temporary, everything is passing and we don't have to immediately satisfy everything. And so it teaches you to be more present with yourself and to not have to rush to try to change things. And so that was really profound to be in that type of meditation.

Speaker 1: 19:19

And you know, obviously I've been meditating for the past 15 years or so 10, 15 years. So this was something that felt a little bit more natural and easy for me to do, because, you know, I've meditated for hours and hours and hours at a time, and so it was something that, mentally, I felt like I could do, and I felt mentally strong enough to be in the space by myself. I had backups, like I had people and my therapist that I could call if, like, it got to be too intense to be alone with myself. But it was actually a very profound weekend to really be in that silence and to be meditating for that long every single day and had some pretty profound shifts about that. So, again, I'll do another episode on that later, but I just wanted to share that because I felt like this is the progression of my journey with meditation and you can see, it wasn't like hey, I'm going to sit here for an hour every single day and do this perfectly Like no, I started out in the beginning saying I'm going to commit to five minutes of stillness every single day, and I explored a lot of different types of meditations and they have all impacted me in a lot of different ways and I know that it can be sometimes intimidating for people to say like, oh what, what types of meditation can I do?

Speaker 1: 20:24

What's right? And then we get overwhelmed or we think we're doing it wrong and it's like, of course you're going to think you're doing it wrong. It's something different that you haven't done before, and it's just between you and you. We don't trust ourselves and we don't know if we're doing it right. Are we sitting in stillness Right? Is it okay if our mind runs? Are we going to get punished? Are we doing this wrong? Is it not going to be beneficial? If you know, a thought comes up when I'm meditating and it's like we're so hard on ourselves because we think that there are all these roles.

Speaker 1: 20:49

And it's like the point of meditation is is you set your intention about what it is that you want to get out of it? And I think as you progress, also along with it, you learn to let go of the expectations and you just do it because, intuitively, you know this is just how you connect with yourself. But in the beginning it's like what is your intention? What do you want to get out of this? You want to feel peace, you want to feel relaxed, and so when you set that intention, your mind and your body and your unconscious is going to move towards that goal, and maybe not. It's not going to happen on the first day, but it's something that will happen over time when you continuously set that intention for your meditation.

Speaker 1: 21:25

So what I'd recommend for anyone who is getting into meditation is to just explore the different types. You know there's so many free resources on YouTube and you know I'll list out in the show notes what, what types of meditation that I have explored in the past and what I'm currently doing. And again, it's just like there's no right or wrong. It's like you know if you want to try this, why are you doing it, what's your intention behind it? And again, no right or wrong, no judgment. It's just, it's your journey and it's your world. So you get to decide what you want to do. And my only recommendation, or my only advice with meditation is just to not be so hard on yourself. Just know that you're going in with the pure intention of having this experience and it's going to turn out and in the way that you need it best, like there's a reason why you're feeling guided to go into explore meditation. So I think that is all that I have to say about meditation today.

Speaker 1: 22:23

I don't believe that there is any one best way to meditate. There is. There are just thousands of different ways to meditate and it really is just about finding what works for you and it really can just be simple of just like sitting in silence and allowing your mind to run without attaching anything to it, you know. And again, meditation can be not just sitting with your legs crossed, like it can be laying down. And oh, actually, one more thing I do want to mention Joe to spend some meditation. This is actually something I got in really heavily into last year and really changed my life.

Speaker 1: 22:57

I'm not sure about to mention this, but if you're familiar with Joe to spend, he goes, takes you into meditations into the quantum space to make changes in your life, to your health and like all these different things, to heal trauma and basically bringing these emotions up to look at and to be healed and to be felt and to release and to create a reality for yourself. And so, if you're familiar with Joe D'Spenza, he does these week-long retreats where you're meditating for hours and hours and hours every single day and they're guided meditations. So the guided meditations are actually very beneficial for people who struggle to sit in the silence. So obviously recommend that as a starting point if you're interested in that. But you can also read Joe D'Spenza books if you're just getting into meditation and you're curious about what exactly his meditations are.

Speaker 1: 23:41

But basically, I went through his entire course online and went through and was starting to do his meditations for one or two hours every single day, with my intention of this is a future that I'm heading towards. And basically, during that time period, over the course of a couple months of meditating for one to actually two or three hours every single day, I would do a meditation in the morning and at night, and then sometimes in the middle of the day, and at the end of that, I ended up losing my job and I bought a one-way ticket to Mexico and my entire life crumbled, which is actually like a really amazing thing. You know, at the time it was like, oh my god, this is awful. I knew what was going on at the time, but this is actually something that happens. You know, when I first started meditating in my 20s and I ended up leaving a relationship because it was an alignment with me, and then last year, when I started meditating deeply again, my entire life kind of crumbled underneath me because it was like I was shifting into a different version of myself and I had different intentions going into my meditation, saying this is how I want my life to be, and so that means, you know, having to let go of things, and so your external reality begins to shift and to change and you begin to perceive it differently. And that is the power of meditation.

Speaker 1: 24:53

Later on last year, you know, after I got back from Mexico, it was like I kind of went. I went through this spiritual awakening and I leaned very heavily on Joe Dispenza and when it was meditating for three hours every single day with with his work, because I needed that support, I needed that space, because I was moving through really, really heavy stuff, like I had just had core belief systems and ideologies and just identities crumbling within me and was experiencing so many deaths. And so having the support of you know, having these guided meditations, was actually very helpful for me to do. And I say this I'm not saying you need to go meditate for three hours every single day. I'm only sharing this because at the time I wasn't working and it was easier. But even when I was working I was still making time for meditation because it was a priority that I was making in my life. It was something I was experimenting with and that I felt was beneficial that I made time for.

Speaker 1: 25:47

So anyways, my point is meditation can produce very subtle shifts in your life. It can shift your perception of life. It can shift your perception of yourself. It can start to change things internally within yourself, and so when you meditate, there might be things that start to shift and change in your external world and it can feel very bumpy and crazy and that's actually really normal, and I don't know that people really are aware of that or or know that, and so that is like.

Speaker 1: 26:14

The last thing that I wanted to share is because I have had this experience, especially when I'm meditating for longer hours during the day, I'm having more, bigger and profound shifts that you know shifts my external reality, and it takes time for that to settle and for newness to to start, and so, if you're going that route, just be aware of like this is a potential potentiality of what may play out in your life and it's not necessarily a bad thing and that is where you need to kind of like buckle down on the meditation, because it will give you that space of groundedness and stability when you're moving through those changes.

Speaker 1: 26:50

Okay, I feel like that is the last thing that I wanted to share, and so I hope this was helpful for anyone who is interested in meditation or getting into it or are curious, like what the journey is like or if you're struggling with it and I just wanted to share my story and my journey with it, because it has been a very up and down, bumpy journey of like highs and lows, and just know that that is completely normal and that it doesn't have to be perfect and you can jump around and try different things and explore and what finds, what lands with you and different seasons of your life, because there are time periods where I didn't meditate for a year or two and the thing is to be consistent even with even if it's just, you know, a minute or two every single day. You know and it's, it can be really really that simple. So, yeah, again, I hope this was helpful.

Speaker 1: 27:36

If there was anything that really stuck out to you or you felt like, you know, kind of shifted something inside of you or you had kind of a light bulb moment, feel free to share this with your friends or your family or on social media or leave a review about something that you really loved about this episode. I really, really appreciate all of that. The reviews really help boost my podcast to have more and more people come and find me. So thank you so much and I appreciate your time and all of you for tuning in and I will see you on the next episode. Bye.