A retreat participant describes her path from a stage IV metastatic breast cancer diagnosis through Joe Dispenza's meditation work to a clean scan. The video is a personal testimony rather than a teaching, framed around how attention and emotional state shifted her relationship to the disease.
Transcript
We get the results back and it's not there anymore. I do not have cancer anymore. There is nothing there. My story begins in 2013. I had a stage four metastthetic breast cancer diagnosis. I went through I think what's probably pretty typical treatment for that which is I had chemotherapy radiation and um a double mystctomy and then I had a 12 year 11-year hiatus um because I was cured of cancer uh by going through that. One thing that happened during that process was I found out I have the BRCA gene expression. And so I was monitored every like six to 12 months. And then in 2024 I was diagnosed with paratracheial stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. I was bummed out to the max and so I went to Cancun. a friend offered me her condo and I wanted to like get myself in a state of like because I was so disre emotionally dregulated that I wanted to get into a state where I could receive the chemo. So I went to Mexico, hung out for seven days, watched a lot of sunrises and sunsets and I did calm down a bit. I also had in the back of my mind like who's going to be my teacher? Like for real, I always have teachers in my life and I'm like who am I going to learn from that will help me during this difficult moment in my life. So anyway, uh the weekends I was in ply car. I go to Cancun airport to fly home. When I get to the airport in the shuttle, I see someone holding one of those like little small little white marker boards cuz they're looking for people. So they were looking for someone by the name of Dr. Joe Despensza to be dropped off. I know this person and I had watched what the bleep do you know and I had read uh the placebo book like back in the day. Hadn't really thought about it much for a really really long time and um and I also thought like you know he's also like famous and so like maybe I'll see him get get dropped off right here next to me. I was kind of excited about that. I get to the gate and they ask me to come up and I talk to the person up there and they're like, "Would you be willing to change seats because someone has a medical condition?" Of course. Um, and so I did that and then I get on the airplane and I realized I'm exhausted and I remember saying to myself, I need to sleep um all the way home. there's something about the airport or I I also was really anxious that I didn't quite get in the space I needed to be in to start chemo the next day. And so I'm like I'm not going to talk to the person next to me. I'm going to sleep. And so I get on the airplane and I see the person. I, you know, give a nod to them and say hi. And I'm putting my luggage up and they're saying something to me like, you know, were you here for blah blah blah blah. But I couldn't hear what she said. And I'd been to Mexico for events. um that were like music events. So when I put my stuff up, sat back down, I said to her, "Were you here for a music event?" And then she said something like, "Oh, you probably wouldn't know what I was here for or something like that." And I'm like, "No, tell me." And she's like, "Oh, I'm just finishing a 10-day advanced retreat with Joe Despensza." And I'm like, "Okay." Like seriously was like I'm like, "Well, let me tell you." Like I just knew, you know, that's that's source, right? Like I had forgotten about him. I saw his name. I got to the airport, forgot. And now my seat has been changed so I can sit next to this woman. It was it was just really cool to like understand what was happening here. And so I told her, you know, I have stage four metastatic breast cancer. I um I uh am going to go home and start chemo the next day. And so she started to tell me about the work and I don't know how many hours long. I was probably time traveling but like that flight was five, six, we talked the whole time. During that time she introduced me to some of his meditations and there was no way for me to listen to I didn't have his meditations downloaded. I had even thought about him in you know a decade. And so she like let me use her ear headphones and um she was just she was an angel and um she was wonderful. We live in different states but you know we exchanged uh texts and uh I got home started chemo the next day and I started meditating and I dug in like I went in in I immersed myself. I literally thought about that like I'm going to immerse myself in this and so I was doing the meditations every day once or twice and then I also found like Dr. Joe uh on podcasts which I love because I felt like the podcasters were like asking him questions I had and so I was learning a lot there and then I also watched the source. I also, funny enough, now that I'm at a retreat, you know, we're required to uh watch the go through the progressive course. I did that on my own even before I knew I was going to a retreat. So, I did that. I did the Dr. Joe lives, which I just love because I there's a whole library there. And also, again, questions are coming from the community and I have those questions. So, it's just self-learning. If I was cooking in the kitchen, which I spend a lot of time doing, um I would have something on. I'd be listening to something. I started listening to um what uh um um one of his books was called Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself. And that book resonated with me like 100%. I started to decide that the first thing I had to do was calm my nervous system. And I was learning from what I was reading and listening and learning to learning from was that I needed to develop consciousness. And so I just decided for the ways I've been thinking about the past and future non-stop that I would start catching that. And I had heard on one of his p on Dr. on one of his podcasts where Dr. Joe was interviewed that he said to use the word change, which I really like because I probably would have used like a negative word like no. And what h what I realized was these thoughts it was like I don't know every second it was just so much like to catch it and but that's consciousness I just need to catch it and so it was so much in the beginning that I I realized I would write down the date cuz I kind of like a little reward system and every time I caught it caught these thoughts I would put a heart down and you know in the beginning we had a lot of hearts but what was cool about that was I actually looked at that as a victory. three because each one of those hearts that's consciousness. So now I'm starting to be conscious of these thoughts and then I would say change and I think about anything else. I started to feel better. I started to feel a little happier. I could wake up, you know, not necessarily going into the past or future and actually wake up. And also there's just like things in his morning and evening meditation where he's like little things that really mattered to me in the state that I was in was like it's a new day. you know, he says it like that and he's like, uh, he says something about like, don't forget to smile today. And I was just like, that mattered so much for my heart. Um, and so I just started to feel better and better. And then it started to come up in meditations that I had been living my life as a victim, like a victim of cancer, a victim of, you know, different things that happened in my life. And that I was engaging with my community, my close circle of friends as a victim. It's such a setup in some ways, you know, cancer diagnosis. Oh, poor me. Or going into the medical center all of the time and they're like, "Tell me about, you know, everything that's going wrong with you as a result of chemo." You know, they want to check in on on what's going on. And so, I just decided to change that with friends and change that um when I would go into the cancer center. And I was just like, you know, I know there's this long list of symptoms. can you trust me to know my body and I'll tell you if something's up because it I just didn't want to put my energy constantly on do you have this, do you have this, do you have this, do you have this? And I really feel like this time with chemo that I have far less symptoms that feel difficult. It's almost like yeah, I'm not giving them my attention. Three months passes and so you know that was three months. I make it sound like it was a short amount of time, but that was three months and I was just dedicated to doing this work, not only every day, but kind of all the time. And so I went back and I had my PET and CT scan and we get the results back and it's not there anymore. Like in my paratrachial lymph node, I do not have cancer anymore. There is nothing there. I am so grateful for this work because it saved my life and um it I'm and I'm happier. Like one of the things I have learned now, you know, from what I've read and from being here is that it's like I just need to create a a life that I love and I'm starting to create a life that I love. I remember at one point looking myself in the mirror. I used to hear about people like looking at the mirror and saying something like I like you and I'm like no. And I just I wasn't even planning on doing it, but one day in this process like I looked in the mirror and I'm like I really love you. Um and so I'm grateful and uh I will continue to do this work always.