15 days of Joe Dispenza BOTEC

[manuel bon]

I wanted to share my experience with Joe Dispenza’s meditations, specifically the Blessing of the Energy Centers (BOTEC), I did 15 days straight of it (also I want to specify that I've been meditating for over 4 or 5 years on my own now). I’m posting this both to document what happened and to get some of your perspective, and I would love to know if anyone has experience with Dispenza's work.

So, I started reading Becoming Supernatural and began doing the meditations he recommends. I did BOTEC 1 but didn’t like it much, it felt slow and I struggled to go deep so then I switched to BOTEC 2 and began doing it daily (also for more context: I’m in Italy with family, working/studying, so mornings were usually my only window. At times I had sleep issues, headaches, hunger, distractions, etc. I also started doing morning pages (3 pages) daily and some yoga)

This first day with BOTEC 2 was the most intense. At some point, especially around the later centers, I started going very deep. I felt something like waves moving through me. Not “in my head” but more like my whole body awareness became the waves, like I was the waves. There was also this sense of expansion, like I was getting bigger as the waves became bigger. It’s hard to explain because it felt like I don’t have a body, but at the same time I did have it; the normal boundaries of the body became strange and soft. My mind was not silent though. It was running commentary: excitement, wanting to share it, wanting to analyze it (“tell someone, tell ChatGPT to understand it better so I can go deeper next time”), and at the same time I tried to let thoughts be. I also noticed some physical stuff, like the diaphragm breathing felt a bit blocked around the “third center” area, and if I tried to adjust breathing, I became overly body-conscious and the depth reduced. Also noise in the environment pulled me out, the music felt loud aand intense at times, I still felt some shoulder/neck tension, even in deep relaxation. Near the end I opened my eyes a few minutes early and I felt emotional, almost teary, not from sadness, more like being touched by something. 

Then the next days: some of them were very easy, some were resistant,I struggled with focus especially when sleep was poor and I had headaches. But my body almost always reached deep relaxation, I didn’t get the very deep altered-state effects like day 1, and I noticed that I had an attachment to that depth.Then today: Day 15 (Dec 22): I was unfocused for much of the meditation, but after reaching the later center(s), I went deeper into relaxation. Then I had another distinct experience: it felt like a spiraling, gentle, wave-like sensation entering through my mouth ,not like the day 1 waves, but a sensation I recognized. It moved very slowly and gently, first into my head and then down through my torso and the whole body. It felt like my body was being filled with something: very light, but also “dense”, not like liquid, butmore like “expanded and full”. I didn’t leave my body, but my body sensations became very light like I was “freed from the body” while still being in it. It was pleasant and peaceful.

The first day and today I was sitting on the chair, other times I also laid down on my bed. 

I’m open to Dispenza’s methods as a structured practice, and I like his book (and I have to say that since I started doing the meditations, daily journaling and yoga I'm feeling pretty good) but I’m also skeptical about the scientific framing, especially the quantum language and big claims. In general I don’t want to blindly believe the narrative because the experiences feel meaningful, or dismiss everything as “self-deception” and become cynical.

Do you have experience with his meditations?