Sense of Soul - The Importance of Meditation

Episode Date: August 17, 2020

Today on the Sense of Soul Podcast, joining us from Australia, Giovanni Dienstmann is an international author, meditation teacher, coach and speaker. He is the author of Amazon Best Seller “Practical Meditation: A Simple Step-by-Step Guide”,  translated into six languages.  He is trained in mindfulness, Zen Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, Raja Yoga and Mantra Yoga. Giovanni shares with us the importance of Meditation and the many techniques and benefits of meditation, mastering your mind and your life!! Giovanni’s FREE 3 Pillars of Meditation Course by his Visiting his amazing website and learn more about his amazing Limitless Life program at Liveanddare.com!  Join us and BREAK THROUGH the “glass ceiling” standing in your way to having the success of your dreams, we joined our friend and colleague, Shelli Roberts, who is hosting a complimentary online summit, bringing together over 20 experts (including us) to share our wisdom on clearing what is holding you back from Being UNSTOPPABLE ! “Breaking Through the Glass Ceiling” is a FREE Online event! This virtual interview series will help you uncover the surprising ways to have more success at work (and in life). This life changing summit Breaking Through the Glass Ceiling FREE Video Series can be found at www.breakingthroughtheglasscelingsummit.com/Sense-of-soul

Welcome to the Sense of Soul podcast. We are your hosts, Shanna and Mandy. Grab your coffee, open your mind, heart and soul. It's time to awaken. Today on Sense of Soul, we are super excited. We have Giovanni Densman. He is an international author, meditation teacher, coach and speaker. He is the author of Practical Meditation, a simple step-by-step guide that is translated into six languages. He is trained in mindfulness and holy crap, you have 9,000 hours of meditation and diverse training in different traditions. You also are the creator of live and dare it's like the fifth most popular meditation blog on the planet and shanna and i are both so excited to connect and learn from you today welcome thanks a lot mandy it's a pleasure to be here so how's it going how are you doing today

yeah it's um 6 a.m here in sydney oh well good morning oh my gosh that's early oh god i'm so sorry well you look fabulous i would not look like that at 6 a.m so good for you yeah yeah soon you will see this the sun hasn't risen yet i'm so sorry no that's that's okay i am an early riser. Are you? Oh, me and Shanna are not early risers. Our brains don't work that early. So is that where you're from? No, I'm from Brazil. I was born and raised in Brazil. I migrated here nine years ago.

Okay. English is my second language. Meditation is Mandy and I's favorite thing to do. And to talk about wonderful wonderful i'd say definitely that it was a big part of my spiritual awakening i also love the science behind what happens to us when we meditate yeah yeah i wrote a post called the 76 benefits of meditation after spending a lot of time going through like all the research I could find, I counted 76 proven benefits. So yeah, benefits for your mind, your body, your relationships, your performance, and of course, your spiritual process. Now, were you taught to meditate as a child? Is this something that you've done your whole life? No, actually, I came

from a family that is not spiritual at all. When I was about 14, 15 years old, I started to develop this interest towards all things mystical, the metaphysical, the esoteric. And I was reading many books. Many of these books spoke about meditation and the benefits of meditation and why it's like such a central practice to all spiritual development. And one day there was a workshop being held in my city from a group called Brahma Kumaris. And I attended that workshop and that experience for me was amazing. There was a guided meditation and for 10 minutes I was in a place that was very quiet. I had never experienced that in my life before. And so I felt, okay, I have to, I have to continue this. I have to meditate every day. And that has been the beginning of this practice for me 20

years ago. I wish I would have figured this out 20 years ago. Oh my gosh, that would have just been a lot less stressful. Yeah. It's's interesting there seems to be this pattern that people awaken to the spiritual life either in their in their mid-teens or in their 40s so in the middle nothing much happens like we're all busy with profession and starting a family etc but that's that seems to be the pattern for for many of us i read that at one point, you would have described yourself as having a hard time managing your energy. You also were bullied at one point. So you also turned your pain into purpose and meditation helps you to kind of be still and quiet yourself. Is that right? Yeah. The way I see everything that happens in our life happens for us, not to us. The difference is if we have the right mindset,

the right internal resources or guidance, or if we have a spiritual outlook on life, then anything that can happen, anything that happens in our life can be used for our growth, for refining our purpose. And so when I'm coaching people into purpose, one of the questions that I ask is, imagine that everything in your life until this moment has prepared you for your purpose. What would that be? You try to connect all the dots

and you see what life has prepared you. It blows my mind that you were so young. I mean, at 15, I think I was like listening to Madonna and dancing around my bedroom and was in such a place of ego. All I cared about was looking pretty and what other people thought of me. I don't know that I even knew how to love myself or let alone be still. That's amazing that your soul was already searching for that at such a young age. Yeah. And I like to stimulate this in others. I think that the earlier you start, the better,

because our mind accumulates habits over time, right? Accumulates patterns of thinking and feeling. And the longer it takes for us to pause and to look within and to start changing these things, the harder it becomes. It's really important that you guys do this work and many other light workers are doing their work to spread these important practices. So you talk about the three pillars of meditation. Can you explain what those three pillars are? Absolutely.

After studying meditation for 20 years and kind of reading more than 200 books on the topic, I started organizing all my knowledge and I realized that everything that you need to know about meditation can fit into these three buckets right and awesome with my experience working with several students I noticed like what are the things that they're struggle with so the first bucket is okay so the three pillars is habit technique transformation These are the three buckets. The first one, habit, is about developing a daily practice. The second one, technique, is about finding the meditation practice that works best for you. And the third one, transformation, is how do you take the skills you learn through

meditation, those deeper states of mind that you experience in meditation, how do you take those into your daily life and really transform yourself, right? So these are the three pillars. Now talking briefly about each of them, the habit pillar is about self-discipline in a way, because until we meditate every every day we are not going to benefit much from the practice right meditation is the type of thing that you need to do it every day it's not the type of thing like it's not like cleaning your garage that you do every once in a while when you have some free time and nothing to do it's like once a year yeah you know it's it's more like um like eating and sleeping and taking shower. You just got to do every day. And one metaphor that I use is imagine that you want to boil water and you know that you need to turn on the And then later on, you do it again and you turn it on for three minutes

and then you turn it off. You can do this for the rest of your life. You will never boil water, right? There needs to be a continuity. And it's the same thing with our meditation practice because our mind is so full of noise and can easily go into negative emotions and memories and unhelpful thought patterns.

That we just need that practice to be there every day for us to have the awareness and the ability to change this. So the first pillar, the first most important thing about meditation is to build that daily practice. Yeah. It doesn't need to be difficult. You don't need to start meditating 30 minutes a day in a difficult position. No, you can start with three minutes or five minutes. No start in the easiest possible way so that you don't stretch your motivation. You don't make it difficult for yourself. And then little by little you increase, you learn new techniques, you get guidance, you meditate for yourself. And then little by little, you increase, you learn new techniques, you get guidance, you meditate for longer. So that's one of the main ideas of the

habit pillar. There are eight other principles that we can talk about, but the first one is to really start small and to grow gradually. Then the second pillar is technique. Most meditation teachers teach one, two, or maximum three different techniques. But the truth is there are hundreds of different styles of meditation. And not all of them are created equal. They are different things for different people. So if you are a more visual person, you may like styles of meditation that are more visual by nature, such as candle gazing or visualization. If you are a more auditory person, you may enjoy other styles of meditation that are more auditory by nature, such as mantra. If you are more of a kinesthetic a body person then breath awareness

or walking meditation may be better for you and this is just one of the different ways to figure out like what's the best style of meditation for you and just like there are different sports many different styles of sport and all of them are good for you all of them are good for your body all of them are physical activity right but you're not going to enjoy all of them you have to find one that you enjoy and then you can continue and you will reap the benefits that's the same thing with meditation you spend some time experimenting systematically ideally with some guidance, different styles of meditation until you come to one that you say, okay, this one flows well for me. This one, I feel great and I experience the benefits more easily.

So this is the one that I'm going to practice. So that is the second pillar, technique. Then the third pillar is transformation. Now, as you practice meditation, you will develop more self-awareness. You will develop the ability to pause. You will develop the ability to let go of your thoughts and to focus on what you want to focus. Now, you need to take your practice beyond the cushion to really apply it in your daily life. So that means that if you are a person that tends to be more reactive or to act

based on anger, then applying meditation to your daily life means that you are practicing awareness. You are watching yourself. You are noticing when you're about to get triggered. And then instead of going into anger, you pause. You take a few deep breaths and then you focus on something else. So this is just one small example of how you can take these skills that you're learning through meditation and apply it in your daily life in a way that really transforms you and your life. In a brief overview, these are the three pillars of meditation. I think that breaking it down into three pillars is very helpful for our listeners, too, because a lot of people get very overwhelmed and they think, oh, my gosh, how do I do this? I can't tell you how many people have come to Shanna and I's classes and been like, I don gosh, how do I do this? I can't tell you how many people have

come to Shannon and I's classes and been like, I don't know how to do it. And they seem to think that there's like a right way and a wrong way and only one way to do it. So, you know, breaking it down very simple is helpful. So I appreciate the simplicity of those pillars. Absolutely. Yeah. So what is your favorite way to meditate? It was difficult for me to choose one because there's more than one that I enjoy, but I would say that my two favorite methods are mantra meditation and a meditation called trataka which is basically gazing it's an open eye meditation where you gaze at an object it could be a crystal it could be a dot it could be an image that is meaningful for you it could be a candle flame so these two methods are the one that works best for me every Every therapist I always had said, you need to learn about mindfulness.

You need to learn about mindfulness. My first class sucked the whole time. All I thought about was how I suck at this. I suck at this. But that's actually what I got out of it is I realized the negative narratives that I had in my head. Yeah. Actually have awareness my head. Yeah. Actually have awareness of that.

Yeah. That's something that I hear from time to time from my students that, oh my God, now that I'm meditating, I'm thinking more. I said, no, you're not thinking more. You're more aware of all the thinking that is going on. Right. And without you being aware of it, there is no chance that you can do

anything about it. And this is one of the greatest gifts of meditation is it shows you that you're not your thoughts, that you're not your mind. Now, in the beginning, this may sound strange, it may sound kind of unreal, or it may sound nice, but it's still just a concept. But if you keep on practicing meditation, there comes a time where this starts to become an experience. And when that happens, then you become more free. You become more peaceful because you know that thoughts can come and go. Emotions can come and go. You're so speaking Shanna's like love language. She's melting over there because first of all,

her favorite word is freedom. But yeah, Shanna, your energy right now is just like, It's nice to hear someone else who's experienced that with just meditation, but that is where my freedom came from. Giovanni, how would you describe freedom? So freedom is when there's fewer things pulling you and pushing you about, you know, you can kind of move more freely, a little bit like a zero gravity space, you know, whereas if we don't have that awareness, then a thought come and the thought pushes you. Or, you know, a memory come from childhood and then it takes over your awareness.

Or someone says something that is hurtful and you feel hurt. So you're constantly being pushed and pulled about by what's happening inside of you and outside of you. And freedom is the opposite. It's like, hey, things can happen, but I'm still centered. I'm still me. I still have space to choose how I want to react and who I want to be. That's it. Knowing that you actually have control of that, because I think that one of the things that I said consistently was that how I was always, I always felt so out of control. And I remember other people, you know, even growing up, my mom and dad,

oh, you're so out of control. And I really did believe, you know, I started to believe I am out of control. I had no control over my thoughts, over my body, over pain, emotions, nothing really. I was like the world's puppet. And that was not freedom. That was absolute opposite of freedom. And in a way, you know, a lot of people talk about the law of attraction. I like to talk about the law of attention, which is what you pay attention to will come to life for you in your mind and in your life. And what you stop paying attention to will slowly disappear. So if there are thoughts of low self-worth and you pay attention to those thoughts,

then guess what? You are feeding them. It's like you feed each of your thoughts with your attention, each of your emotions with your attention. You pay attention to them, they will come up. They are front and center and they will continue as long as you're paying attention. But if you just observe them,

if you just are aware of them like clouds in the sky, then they will follow their natural course. And just like every thought, they will move on. What do you think about when thoughts continue to come in, sitting with them a little bit longer? How can you use meditation to go beyond maybe something that consistently is coming up for you? So the nature of thoughts is to come and go. But some of those thoughts, we connect with some of those thoughts, we weave them into the fabric of our personality. Right? And so that becomes a

pattern that becomes close to our identity. Like we believe in them and then they keep on coming. So if we were brought up with overly critical parents, maybe there's a thought that I'm not good enough, that I, I can't do things well. Right. And that thought keeps on coming. And so to change this is, is going to be a mixture of, you know, personal work with self-reflection and mindset work, and also the awareness that meditation brings. Because in a way, we come to this world not knowing anything about anything, right? We come as almost like a blank sheet of paper.

And then we little by little build our identity based on the stories that we hear from others. And then once we form our identity in our first years of life, then we use that identity to navigate life. And if we are unconscious people, if we never stop and become aware or do any sort of personal work, we would just continue with that identity until we die. But if we, for some of us, we become aware like, wait a second, maybe this is not true. Maybe this is just conditioned. Maybe I was conditioned to believe that I'm not good enough, but I was not born believing that I'm not good enough. So what's going on here? And then when you have that realization, then, okay, how did this belief come about? Or it came about by repetition. I was told by my environment, by people around me that I'm not good enough, directly or indirectly.

And I was told so many times that I believed it. So what's the way out of this? Well, you do the opposite. You find reasons to believe that you are good enough, that there is tremendous power and wisdom and light inside of you. And you focus there. You let that grow and you let the other thing go. It's a process, right? It's not going to happen overnight, but you keep at it. And that's why self-discipline is important. You keep at it.

And little by little, that new identity, more empowered, more wise, becomes your default little by little. I was reflecting back to when I first started meditating and I struggled with it because I wasn't comfortable in my own skin. So to quiet myself and to be still meant that I had to sit with myself and that was not a place that I like to be. So as I continued to do the self-love work, meditation got easier for me. Do you think that you have to have self-love to meditate to begin or i'm hearing what you said was you don't you just have to bring awareness to those thoughts

and then start to feed the positive yeah i think you need both things you need both of self-awareness and self-compassion and there's no particular order that you need to develop first this and then the other they may come in any order but you need to develop first this and then the other. They may come in any order, but you need to develop these two things. As you become more aware of yourself, you may notice some areas of your being, of your personality that are carrying a lot of negativity, a lot of hurt, and that they are behaving kind of like a virus. They are harming yourself. And as you become more aware of it, then one of the possible responses is stop it

and instead develop compassion for yourself, develop love and acceptance for yourself. And that will start to undo that pattern. Or it could be that you start with self-compassion, that you realize like, hey, I'm always beating myself up. Why am I doing that? Like, can I not find things about me that I love and nourish myself as I would nourish a child? And then you start with that intention. And then, of course, you're going to have to practice awareness to notice when you're going into the bad stories and then to pull yourself back.

Do you do a lot of guided meditation? Well, you said your favorites were mantra and gazing. So you're really trying not to think, aren't you? I like to set intentions with mine. What do you feel about that? Sure. Guided meditation is a really helpful way for you to practice, especially in the beginning, or also if you're trying a new technique. In my meditation programs, I give, I don't use guided meditations anymore. But if I'm trying a new style, then yeah, I may find a good teacher that teaches that style that I don't know of yet. And then follow the guided meditation for a few sessions. And there was another part of your question, which was about intention.

I think you mentioned resolution, like how can you use meditation to work with an intention? So there are two different things here. First is that every style of meditation will help you strengthen your mind. Your mind will become stronger, your awareness, your willpower will become stronger. And when your mind is stronger, it's much easier to manifest any intention in your life. So any style of meditation will help you with that. And then on the other hand, there are some particular styles of meditation that are more

focused on this. So one style that is very old and very traditional is called the yoga nidra. And in yoga nidra, it's a lying down meditation. You go through a body scan and you go to a very deep state of relaxation. And in that deep state of relaxation, you affirm your resolution. They call it your resolution. You can call it your intention. You plant that seed deeply in your subconscious mind. And you do that every day with the same resolution

until it comes to fruition, until it happens. So that is a specific way of how you can use meditation to manifest an intention. I love that. I love that meditation, by the way, as well. That's what I'm saying with the second pillar, different techniques, right? The different techniques will have a different taste to them. And so it's really about experimenting different styles and seeing what are you looking for? What are you looking to experiment?

If you are following a particular spiritual tradition, like the shamanic or the Buddhist or the yogic, then there are styles of meditation that are kind of prescriptive, like, okay, this is how you meditate. And these are the experiences or the insights that you're looking to develop. But if not, then you would just try different styles and see what works for you. Do you often feel like when you are deeply in meditation,

arriving into another dimension, you're no longer here in the 3D world? Can you speak about that? Yeah, that's a good question. In my 20 years of practice, I have tried different techniques and some of them never led to anything like that, while other techniques lead to an experience like that more easily. So for the meditation techniques that I practice that lead to an experience like that, then yes, it's in a way like the eye of the mind is opening up and your eyes are closed, but you're seeing all sorts of images. Sometimes you're seeing creatures or spirits, you may call them. Sometimes they are beautiful ones. Sometimes they are ugly ones. And so there are two different ways to look at this you can look at all of these as expressions of your deeper mind like perhaps a Jungian

psychologist would say that they are archetypes or that they are you know expressions of the collective unconscious so maybe they are things that exist deeply inside of you and are manifesting in front of your closed eyes just like things that exist deep in our unconscious mind manifest in the form of dreams they can manifest in the form of visions during some styles of meditation or it could be that these creatures these beings actually exist somewhere in the universe in invisible form and some styles of meditation allow you to get in contact with that so it's different people who have a different opinion about this I personally think it's both sometimes it's one sometimes it's the other yeah that sounds fine huh a new dimension of life right it's um yeah you know like in in tibetan buddhist practice they

one of their main practices called idam that's um y-i-d-a-m and in that practice you actually visualize a deity and um you should visualize it in a way that it feels so vivid, so clear. And then you are in communion with that deity. And as that connection deepens, you kind of download the knowledge and the virtues, the qualities of that deity onto yourself. It's like you absorb that. Yeah. Yeah. But with the difference that it's not that you are a vessel for that energy. It's like you are kind of becoming like that energy. You're kind of becoming one with that energy. And so it's, you know, in quantum physics, they have this phenomenon called the quantum entanglement and quantum entanglement is when two particles are entangled whatever happens to one happens to the other doesn't matter how far they are in time or space right and einstein called

this the spooky action at a distance it's very weird they don't know why it happens like it's mind-bending but it happens and this explains a lot of psychic phenomenon and even like when when you're really really connected to your child and and something happens very far away and you know that something is wrong right without any other means of communication you just know that she's not well something happened right that's because there is a type of entanglement between the two minds. And so I've never read this anywhere, but that's my explanation of why this practice works is through developing that connection

with these invisible beings, with these entities, we are kind of establishing a quantum entanglement between ourselves and them. And so we are able to kind of vibrate in the same frequency to really resonate and to kind of manifest those qualities in our daily life i agree energy has no distance i have a question i was thinking about how i have a lot of people that have attended our classes that have reached out to me about meditating. And a lot of them, you know, they talk about how they don't trust what they see or what they're visualizing when they're meditating. And they say that it's just their imagination, my imagination.

What would you say about the imagination versus trusting it and it actually being very real and you know having a lot of our higher self in that space yeah well i'd say that um interpreting your intuition as imagination is a sure way of killing it because then you're not trusting it. And the thing is there is imagination and there is intuition and there are two different things, right? And how do we tell the difference? There's no clear rule, right? When you want to do something

and there's a voice inside of you says, don't do it. How do you know when that is a voice of fear versus when that is the voice of intuition? There is no clear rule to determine. See, one of my favorite exercises is that discernment, sitting with yourself. Yeah. And so as you sit with yourself more and you become more aware of your internal world, little by little, you start

seeing the difference. It's like you are in a dark room. There's no light. And if you stay in that dark room for long enough, little by little, your eyes start to adjust and you begin to see things, right? And then things that before were like, just, oh, it's a blur and it's a blur like they're kind of the same thing for me as you stay longer with that experience you start developing that discernment that awareness and then you see like no these are actually two different things the problem is we are not paying attention to our internal world much we are paying attention to the external world now if we do this work of sitting with ourselves and developing self-awareness, then we become able to see the difference between what is imagination

and what is intuition, what is fear and what is that gut feeling that you need to listen to. I have never found a way to explain that to people saying like, hey, this is the rule, just apply this rule and then you will know if it's fear or not. Unfortunately, I have not come across anything like that. I might in the future, hopefully. But until then, you would just need to sit with it and develop the awareness to tell the difference. Well, the way you just answered my question was pretty profound for me. So you might have not found the exact way, but the way you used words to answer my question was very helpful. And I'm going to pass that on. So thank you for that. You know what I read the other day, I read something amazing and I want to try it out.

We're going to have to use this as an experiment. But I've heard if you lay outside and look at the stars and you cover your eyes with like a blindfold, you stay there long enough. All of a sudden, you'll see the stars like in your mind. I believe it. I don't know if it's true, but I read that. Come on over tonight, Shanna. Come on over, girlfriend. Isn't that crazy? I wonder if it's true but I read that come on over tonight Shanna come on over girlfriend I didn't bite you too but you're too far you talked about two things that really stuck out to me one was the word empower it's kind of like

your your mantra you powered peace can you talk about that word and what it means to you? Yeah. For a very long time, I tried to define like, what is it that I'm about? What is it that I am seeking? And what is it that I am teaching? And you know, you can teach meditation and spirituality in many different ways. And each person has their own unique taste and there's a different feeling with every teacher.

For me, I find that it's about empowered peace. And it's a combination of words that they're usually not together. So usually those teachers that emphasize peace, you know, it's all about letting go and finding a place inside of you that is peaceful and free and unattached. And everything is good there. And that's wonderful. And those that

emphasize more empowerment, then it's about, no, it's about mastering your mind. And it's about changing yourself. And it's about becoming the person you want to be and not being bullied by your thoughts. Right? For for me these two things are important that if you if you just have peace without empowerment then it's like the piece of graveyard and it's i'm not interested in that and if you just have empowerment but you don't have peace then it's like you are a human doing and and not a human being so we want empowered peace and I like I like to say playfully that meditation is not only for you to love what you get but also for you to get what you love how much do you love Thich Nhat Hanh yeah Thich Nhat Hanh I

studied some of his books in the past when I was in Buddhism. I found it very insightful. It's not the type of teaching that I'm resonating with the most right now, but I think he's a wonderful teacher and he's doing wonderful work in the world. And he had an important role to play in my journey as well. Who are some of your mentors so i like a lot the the teachings of the yogis now people like um swami vivekananda and swami shivananda and and swami rama there are many uh yogis i find that they embody the empowered peace aspect really well.

That's sometimes when you hear certain teachers like some monks or some Buddhist teachers, they speak kind of so peaceful that there's no energy to it. And that is wonderful for some people, but for me, it doesn't appeal. Now, when I hear some of these yogis speak, like there's so much shakti there's so much energy and power behind each word and and that appeals to me yeah like their music even i have found some really good music that i can just get lost in some of it's even very upbeat and it can you can meditate just as well you know even if even if it's you know got a little rhythm to it yeah yeah and you know the the spiritual tradition of yoga is um most likely the oldest spiritual tradition of meditation they have been around for at least

5 000 years they have developed so many different styles. And so you are likely to find an approach there that you like. If you are more of a head person, more of an intellectual person, there is the path of Vijnana Yoga, which is the path of knowledge. If you are more of a heart person, a devotional person, then there is the path of love or the path of bhakti. And so there are different paths to to meet different needs and different temperaments sounds like religion i remember when i mean i grew up catholic but i remember going to the christian church for my first time like where they were

dancing and bible beating and all that stuff and i was like oh, Oh, but you know, I loved it. And so I was like, well, I don't want to go back to the boring church. That one puts me to sleep. But really, you have to find like, what kind of matches your vibe. I think like you said, there's really no, you know, right one is whatever you are. And I think that you change too, in your life, you know, there might be a time where, you know, moving is a part of your meditation and then other times just needing to be still. Yeah, absolutely. But I have tried different styles throughout the years.

Well, and I chose to challenge myself because what feels comfortable to me is, you know, using my throat chakra. I'm very verbal. So instead of using the meditation, mantra meditation that felt most comfortable to me at first, it was great. But I then challenged myself to just be more still because I need to talk less, you know, and so just really then once you get comfortable in it, then learning to challenge yourself with other techniques as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. With the pandemic, are you doing classes like on Zoom?

Yeah. So all my work is online. That hasn't changed. Even when I coach people, you know, I'm in Australia. Most of my clients are in US or Europe. So my work has always been mostly online at least at this point um so yeah i have published a couple of free coronavirus meditations that people can find on my site and they're also on the inside timer app we did do one ours was i used some cuss words though saying cuss words feels really good to me. So speaking of the pandemic, there was a sentence that stuck out to me on your website. And then you talked about how this learning and training has radically

transformed your mind and your view of the world and how now you live fearless, peaceful, and anxiety-free. And that sounds really fucking nice. I think that everyone in the world right now could really put that on their wish list. I mean, do you truly live fearless? I mean, how do you put up boundaries and protect yourself from taking on what's happening right now? And what advice or experience can you share with people to help them get through these times? Yeah, it's an interesting question. And it's a combination of things for me.

So a little bit of it is my own personality. I think I'm more on the fearless side than on the anxious side. So that does play a role. But the big transformation was, you know, the spiritual path for me, the spirituality and awakening to who I am. Because in that space of being pure awareness,

there's no fear there. There's no anxiety there. And the deeper you go into that space, the easier it is for you to, you know, bring that into your daily life. It's almost like after a while that becomes the background of everything. And so as I'm going about my daily life, I'm busy with the world and with work and with family and stuff. But behind all of that, whether I'm aware of it or not, is that undercurrent of just pure awareness. And in that space of pure awareness, there's no fear and there's no anxiety. And if any emotional agitation happens in my life, I find that I almost effortlessly and very quickly drop back into that space. So it's like knowing that you're dreaming while you're dreaming.

Bad things can happen in the dream and you can be engaged with that for a while, but then you just remember like, no, I'm dreaming. Like nothing that happens here really matters to who I am. And so as a result of spiritual awakening, when you become more acquainted with that inner self of pure awareness, and you start seeing life as a dream, then you just have the freedom to play. You can do things. I can go and try something.

And if I perform really badly and it's shameful, it's okay because it doesn't matter. Now there's a bit of, there's a playful freedom about it. You can move in life unencumbered. That is part of my message. I want more people to experience that because life is not meant to be a chore you know it's uh it's we are here to play like the the universe or god or energy it's already perfect it's just here expressing itself and the saying that I read once god is a comedian playing in front of an audience too afraid to laugh. And I just want to make sure that that's not me. I can laugh at the jokes. Yeah. I used to do so much meditation that I felt like I was detaching a little bit from reality and I wasn't grounded. And so that became a big part of my journey to find that balance and remember that I cannot always be up here where I can escape, but also be very grounded.

What do you do to stay grounded? Yeah, it's interesting because I've been through a similar process. And, you know, we all have our inclinations. Some people are more in the mind space. Some people are more in the heart space. Some people are more in the body space. And none of these is better than the others. We need the three of them. And whichever space we are in, if we are only there, we are going, some areas of our life are going to be lacking and it's not going to be balanced. So for people like you and I, who came more from perhaps the mind space is like, Hey, how do I integrate the heart space in the body space

so that I am connected and I'm also grounded. And there are practices for that. There are meditation practices that are more grounding. So one free meditation that is there on my site is the mountain meditation. That is a very grounding experience. If you are more in the head space, you may enjoy that practice. Or it may be really challenging for you, but you will notice the difference. It opens a new dimension for you in your life. At the same time, if you're all the time in the heart space, then you may need other meditations that allow you to kind of be a

little bit more impartial, a little bit more calm and still a bit more grounded as well. And also if you're too much in the body space, then you will need practices to kind of open up the other two dimensions for you. So ideally, it's about developing ourselves holistically so that we are not too much just one thing. We can function on all levels. I get a lot of people that say, do I have to be spiritual to meditate? What would your answer be? No, you don't have to be spiritual to meditate.

There are many layers to meditation. If you are agnostic or even atheist, or you have a specific belief, like you're Christian or Muslim, whatever, you can practice. There are many styles of meditation that you can practice that will not conflict with your worldview at all. And practicing those styles in a secular way, in a non-spiritual way, will still give you many, many benefits. Meditation was originally created as a spiritual exercise. And the only reason why people were meditating in the past was because they wanted to awaken spiritually.

They wanted to come to a point in themselves of peace, of true happiness, a point beyond suffering. They wanted to outgrow the limitations of our human experience, so to speak. So that's why meditation was created. But in the past 50 years, many of the Westerners that went to India or China or other countries in Southeast Asia and learned meditation, they realized like, hey, I can teach this in a way that I don't include any of the spiritual elements and people will still derive a lot of benefit from it. And so they came back to the west and they started teaching and many of these monks and yogis did the same they taught in a way that is kind of

very secular in most cases and then people saw that yeah this is really beneficial i don't need to believe in anything to meditate and then they started doing there was scientific studies on meditation and they realized like yeah it's. Whether you believe on any of the meditation philosophies or not, just by following this practice, you will experience many benefits. What are some of the most profound benefits that meditation have for people that maybe people aren't aware of? Well, so just top of my mind from the studies I've read, in terms of physical health, it will help prevent heart diseases. It will help prevent Alzheimer's and other brain diseases. It will diminish inflammation. It will improve your immune system, which is a really good idea

at this time. And it will also help you live longer. So it lengthens the telomeres and that helps you to live longer. From the mental aspect, meditation will help you to manage anxiety, stress, depression, fear. It will help you be more focused, more self-aware. There's even studies showing that people who meditate frequently, they feel less pain. Actually, they feel more the pain, they feel more the sensations in the body, but they are less affected by the pain. It's like their brain is aware of everything, but it's less disturbed by the sensations of pain. The emotional benefits, well, helps you to overcome all of those negative mental states, such as anxiety and depression.

Some styles of meditation, like loving-kindness meditation, will help you to develop greater empathy for other people, which in turn improves your relationships, whether romantic relationships or just relationships in a family or at work, and also helps you to develop self-compassion and self-acceptance towards yourself. And then the spiritual benefits, there's not much study on the spiritual benefits because this is kind of still a little bit outside of the scope of science. So this is more anecdotal evidence. People say like, okay, when I meditate for this amount of time or for these many years, I start experiencing these things or start having these insights or I go to a different place, etc.

Yeah, there are all these benefits. If people want the full list, they can just Google 76 benefits of meditation and then they can read the sources and everything. Could you tell our listeners where they could find you, tell everyone about your website and what you offer, what kind of classes and coaching you offer? Sure. So the best way to get in touch

is going to liveandthere.com. You can learn everything about me there. I also have a YouTube channel that you can subscribe to. And the easiest way for you to get started in this journey of meditation with my support and also in a community of like-minded individuals is to join the Limitless Life program. And you'll find the links and all the information you need over there. And now it's time for Break That Shit Down.

If you could please do us a favor and leave our listeners with some last words. Yeah, your life is as your mind is. So I invite you to become aware of the reality you are creating for yourself through your mind. And if this is a reality that you want, then just give it more attention and it will continue. But if this is a reality that you don't want, then you can create something else. You can change the stories you're telling yourself. And these stories, they are your life. The way you see life, the way you experience life is the stories you're telling yourself. Meditation helps you to become aware of that and to change it thank you so much you have a very gentle soul and you can feel it you can feel your genuineness your authenticity your love so i i

feel honored to have met you thank you so much mandy and shanna it was a great pleasure hey sense of soul listeners join mandy and i and break through the glass ceiling standing in your way to having the success of your dreams. We joined our friend and colleague, Shelley Roberts, who is hosting a complimentary online summit, bringing together over 20 experts, including us, to share our wisdom on clearing what is holding you back from being unstoppable. This virtual interview series will help you uncover the surprising ways to have more success at work and in life. So sign up and reserve your spot at no cost to join us. You'll discover the wisdom, tools, and strategies you need to finally

take your life to the next level. This life-changing summit, breaking through the glass ceiling, free video series can be found at www.breakingthroughtheglassceilingsummit.com backslash sense dash of dash soul. And we will be posting that link in the episode notes. We are all sharing amazing free gifts and resources designed to assist you on this incredible journey. We are very honored to be part of this. Yeah. So check it out. Thanks for being with us today. We hope you will come back next week.

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