Ross Edwards BSc DipBSoMLet’s look at this powerful Joe Dispenza meditation that you can use to experience enormous personal growth in any domain of life.
Though I love Joe Dispenza’s work, I found his explanation of this technique in his book Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself long-winded and repetitive. In essence, this is powerful mental training that we undertake in seven easy steps.
We enter our minds, flush out the gunk and replace it with new, positive, empowering material. We mentally train ourselves as our ideal self such that we slowly become it in everyday life.
So I’ve taken all Joe Dispenza’s best insights, distilled them down to a bitesize, easy-to-understand form, and added insights from my own practice. Let’s get right to it – starting with the background to this meditation.
Background to Joe Dispenza Meditation For Personal Growth
What does Joe Dispenza Mean by Meditation?
Meditation is like saying “sport” – it’s vague and broad. There are tonnes of varieties and approaches, so we need to be clear on what we mean by meditation in this context.
In my opinion, this Joe Dispenza meditation is more like a variety of prayer or visualisation. Only in some phases are we building the core skills of meditation. That’s not to discount its power – I’m just a stickler for terminology and precision.
Whatever we decide to call what Joe Dispenza does, in this practice our goal is to go into the subconscious and sow the seeds for a new identity. We remove our attention from time, obligations, habits, and routine to focus on what we want to create.
The goal of this Joe Dispenza meditation is to move beyond the analytical mind into the subconscious mind, dissociating from our known reality and the old self. Once you’re immersed in the practice, it’s as though you’re staring at your future with a fresh piece of canvas, free to create. You’re ready to change your internal state free from outside influences. Having pruned away your habitual self, you have space to build a new mind, new self and new future.
How to Use This Joe Dispenza Meditation for Personal Growth
We can apply this seven-step Joe Dispenza meditation to anything we want to change – from conventional addictions, to mental patterns, emotional blocks, limiting beliefs, and more.
We dredge up our mental and emotional patterns and clean them before putting ourselves in the driver’s seat, able to create a new self as we define it. You’ll do work to identify your own sticking points before apply this process to them.
Since to perform Joe Dispenza’s meditation correctly we need to detach from everything we know, our setup is crucial.
Your Setup for This Joe Dispenza Meditation
Let’s go for minimal distractions here – you’re trying to break your associations with your past. Any known sights, sounds or people could easily distract you and take you back to your habitual state. So go to a secluded place, leave your phone, shut the door, reduce noise in your surround, and keep your eyes closed throughout the meditation.
While we want to be free of distractions and known stimuli, we also need to be alert and focused. So sit with your back upright – you can sit on a chair or sofa or go for a more elaborate position. In any case, make sure you can remain comfortable for 15-20 minutes.
Joe Dispenza recommends we do this kind of meditation either early morning or late evening. This is when our mind tends to be more relaxed and open to alteration. It’s also a good idea to stick to the same spot every day so that you start associating this space with growth and transformation.
If your mind is wild, which it will be at times, bring it back to the activity. Speaking the steps out loud can help. You can even keep your eyes open, so long as you don’t fall into your old associations and have urges to get up and do something else.
The body will likely get restless and distracted by stimulation in your environment, especially if you’re a beginner meditator. Just let it relax into the posture, training it to remain still and poised. With practice, you’ll get used to being stationary for extended periods of time.
The 7-Step Joe Dispenza Process
As for time, Joe Dispenza recommends that we spend around 10 minutes on each phase, so that the entire session lasts 40 minutes. I don’t think this is necessary, especially if we practice every day. I suggest you try each phase for five minutes, meaning a session of 20 minutes, then decide whether you’d like to lengthen it.
Start on Phase 1, practicing that for a while, before incorporating Phase 2. After some time, incorporate Phase 3, and so on. A good barometer is one week on each phase before you incorporate the next, but you can take as long as you need.
Let’s look at a quick overview of the seven steps before we go into detail.
Quick Overview of 7 Steps
The 7 Steps of Joe Dispenza Personal Growth Meditation in Detail
This Joe Dispenza process starts as seven separate steps, but your goal is to eventually memorise and internalise them such that they merge into one fluid process.
To help us master the stages, we tackle them in four phases. Slowly the steps will begin to come together, which is a sign in that you’re internalising the process.
Phase 1
Joe Dispenza Meditation Step 1: Induction
This is the first step in all your sessions from now on.
The goal here is to reach a state conducive to inner change, stepping our brain activity down from active, self-involved Beta to relaxed, focused Alpha and Theta.
The cerebellum is both the seat of the subconscious mind and plays a role in proprioception – our awareness of the body’s position in space. So by working with the body in induction, we prepare ourselves to access the subconscious.
From another perspective, feelings are the language of the body and subconscious mind. By going into the sensing and feeling mode, we begin to access the subconscious.
This process is like a body scan but we focus mainly on the location of the body parts.
Start with the head, then go into the neck and throat, shoulders, chest, arms, hands, fingers, stomach, waist, upper thighs, thighs, knees and hamstrings, calves and shins, ankles, feet, and finally the toes.
Pay attention to the volume, density and position of each body part. Don’t rush it, but maintain a good rhythm.
Once you’ve scanned the body, now try to be aware of the whole body at once, the tear-shaped volume it occupies. Now extend your awareness to the room and the volume it occupies in space.
By this point, you should be beyond your habitual perception of the body and your identification with it.
Practice this for the first week or until you’re used to the process, then move on to Phase 2.
Phase 2
Joe Dispenza Meditation Step 2: Recognise
This is the step in the process where we identify the problem we’ll work with in the future steps. Before we do this sitting down, we do a life review, looking at ourselves and unearthing persistent issues.
This is where we begin to override our unconscious repetition, our habitual ways of thinking and acting that define the old self. The key to this is self-observation and stark honesty.
Step 2 Preparation
Before implementing Phase 2 for a week, identify an area to work on by asking the following questions:
- what are my limiting emotions?
- what disempowering thoughts do I have?
- how do I harm myself and others?
- what negative emotions do I feel habitually?
- in which areas of life do I feel unsatisfied, and how am I creating this?
- what are my insecurities?
- what is my social facade hiding?
Try to identify an emotion or habit associated with each question. Now choose one of them, the most afflictive. If an emotion appears several times, go for that one.
We work with one at a time, but since negative emotions reinforce one another, you might find you heal several at once.
Now let’s work with this one emotion.
Step 2 Process
Close your eyes and try to feel the emotion, paying attention to how it feels in the body and its physical signs, like tension, heavy breathing or unpleasant sensations. Be with it.
this emotion has motivated you to appropriate everything you know in your environment to fashion an identity. Because of this feeling, you created an ideal for the world instead of an ideal for yourself.
Joe Dispenza
This emotion has been conditioned into your mind by repeated experiences, and your body is now programmed to reexperience the same circumstances in your life. This reinforces the emotion, keeping you stuck in the past and unable to evolve.
Now ask yourself how you think when you feel this way. Emotions aren’t only a body experience – they influence our state of mind and attitudes, eventually affecting everything we do. Write down your habitual thoughts and actions when you experience the state, and keep adding to your list throughout the week. This is the key that will open the door to freedom.
Joe Dispenza Meditation Step 3: Admit and Declare
Now it’s time to admit these hidden aspects of ourselves out loud, letting it be known, sending it out beyond yourself. If you like, you can consider you’re admitting this to God, but it’s okay if that doesn’t jive with you.
By speaking it out loud, you’re also admitting to yourself the actions and emotions you’ve been denying. This helps you befriend the unconscious and your pain. By admitting, you start breaking the emotional tension between the inside and the outside.
We do this with full acceptance. There’s no moralising, no judgement, no punishment. Admit it with compassion and love.
everything that you’ve experienced and interacted with in your external life has an energetic emotion attached to it.
Joe Dispenza
Joe Dispenza Meditation Step 4: Surrendering
Now we’re going to ask for help from something beyond us. Ask for a greater power to resolve your issues and assist you. When we do this, we let something else take control and creatively help us. We free ourselves from our limited consciousness, from the perspective of being ourselves. You can address this to God, or to life, or to any other power that’s bigger than you.
Surrendering means you relinquish control over the outcome and the idea that you can resolve it, instead trusting that life will provide the solution. You’re not bargaining, making promises, feeling guilty, or giving excuses. Just be humble, honest and sincere, knowing you’re not being judged.
You can write your own surrender statement and stick to it, but know that once you have the principles clear, you can improvise. I just say what is most poignant for me at the time, express my deepest yearnings for healing and change, and ask for help.
In doing this process, feel that you’ve already received. Help is already on the way. Indeed, your admission and surrender is part of that healing process.
Phase 3
Joe Dispenza Meditation Step 5: Observing and Reminding
In this step of the meditation, we become conscious of the specific actions, emotions and thoughts that comprise the state of mind and body we’re trying to shed.
We remind ourselves of all our habits associated with the chosen state. The goal is to become so aware of that old personality that we can’t slide into it any longer. You see the patterns throughout the day and halt yourself. You stop living out the old self, meaning it slowly weakens.
Thoughts are a crucial part of this process – these often trigger the inbuilt behaviour or emotion. You have to observe your thoughts and question them, without acting on them.
Habitual actions also form part of this old subpersonality. The body drives us to do what we’ve always done, setting us in motion and having us act unconsciously. This reinforces that personality and satisfies our urge to feel the same way.
Our actions also serve to mask our emotions. For example, we often use addictions to fill our emptiness. The unfortunate thing about masking is that it’s subject to law of diminshing returns: the more we do it, the more we need to do it.
Review and memorise the list from Step 2 and become familiar with your actions when this emotion drives you. This reminds you who you don’t want to be and gives you more control throughout the day.
By doing this you enter your subconscious programs and expose them. The goal is to become so familiar that you don’t let them fire at all. You’ll slowly destroy the old self.
Continue reviewing the list until you can see this subpersonality with exquisite clarity. With time, it’ll no longer by unnoticed – you’ll be in control.
Joe Dispenza Meditation Step 6: Redirecting
While in Step 4 we surrendered, here we take the reins and actively shut out our old behaviours. With redirecting, we stop ourselves behaving unconsciously and prevent our old mental programs from running. With time, we weaken our old synaptic connections, and that old subpersonality fades.
In this Joe Dispenza meditation, we picture two types of scenes: ones where we’re thinking and feeling unconsciously, ones showing scenarios where we could easily fall back into our old selves. As we let these scenes flicker across our mind’s eye, we firmly say “Change”.
The beauty of this step is that we can apply it throughout the day too. We don’t even need to do the induction step – we can go straight to Step 4. Whenever we’re stuck in an act, thought or emotion related to this state, we say “Change”, either out loud or mentally.
These patterns continue automatically throughout the day without us realising because we’re addicted to them. When we verbally interrupt them, we create space from them and free ourselves up for new behaviour.
Likewise, watch for automatic reactions and try to stop them. Say “Change” as you watch the urge to react appear. Also look out for the typical cues that set off this state. Like Pavlov’s dog, we condition ourselves to react in predictable ways through repetition and reinforcement. Then we do it without thinking – it’s seamless!
Phase 4
Step 7: Creating and Rehearsing
Let’s get to the real exciting part of this meditation procedure.
Up to now, we’ve been breaking the habit of the old self, freeing up energy for creation of a new self. Now is when we start sowing seeds. We do this through vivid imagination and free association.
It’s crucial you feel inspired and joyful as you imagine this new self. These emotions are like fertiliser for your visions and make you feel you already are that person, which quickens your journey.
Remember this neuroscientific fact: circuits that fire together wire together. This is Hebb’s Law. And once wired, they fire together more easily! So in Phase 4 we are rehearsing the new self so that we can call on it in the heat of battle. With practice, it’ll feel familiar, routine, natural, and your personality will shift. We memorise new thoughts and feelings such that we’re unshakeable.
Step 7: How to
Write down answers to the following questions, and use your answers during Step 7 of this Joe Dispenza meditation:
- what is my highest vision for myself?
- who do I want to be?
- what’s the best version of me?
- what are my highest emotions and motivations?
- how do I want to think, act and feel?
In the meditation, bring up specific images of your future self. Begin to free associate, holding the image in your mind for a few seconds, then letting it go. Ignore the “how to” – how exactly you’ll become that person. Trust that this work is a huge step towards that.
The goal is to be able to reproduce at will the rehearsed state of mind. When you’re sitting down, make sure you feel different. That’s when you know the vision is impacting and inspiring you. If reactions and resistance come up, be strong and push through them.
You can review your notes during the meditation, but be spontaneous too. Let yourself get ultra inspired and ambitious, asking yourself these questions and allowing spontaneous answers to come.
Your goal is to get to the point where you are the new self without consciously willing it – you simply are that new, improved person.
Your rehearsal should become easy with time. If you get bored, that’s good! It means your imaging is becoming familiar and automatic. Keep going until it’s totally ingrained, until you see that you’ve become that person in daily life.
Now it’s time for you to practice this meditation in your own time! Stick with one emotion or unhelpful pattern until you get bored of visioning the new self, then move on to another pattern. With time, you’ll see those old chains loosen up, leaving you free and empowered.
