"Survival to Creation: The Meditation Retreat Experience"

Survival to Creation

The Meditation Retreat Experience

Renata Papp

Renata Papp is certified in neurology and is a licensed esthetician who also works as a model, writer and transformation coach, all of which is shared on her Instagram and popular YouTube channel. Based in Budapest, Hungary, she shared with Modern Occultist her experiences at an intensive manifestation retreat and the lessons learned...

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If you had asked my teenage self whether I believed in manifestation, nervous system regulation, or the idea that thoughts could heal the body, I would have looked at you in confusion—or fear. My early life was not shaped by empowerment or emotional literacy, but by survival.

From a very young age, I struggled with depersonalization and derealization (DPDR), panic attacks, and obsessive-compulsive–like behaviors. At the time, no one around me understood what was happening, including myself. I was never taught how to regulate my emotions, how to feel safe in my body, or how to process fear. As my panic attacks intensified, my parents did what they believed was best: they took me to a psychiatrist. At fourteen-years old, I was prescribed antidepressants and Xanax.

While the medication may have helped temporarily, it never addressed the root cause: a nervous system locked in chronic survival mode. When I eventually came off the medication, my system became even more destabilized. Between the ages of fifteen and sixteen, I began partying heavily. I drank, smoked weed, and numbed myself—not out of rebellion, but out of desperation. Anxiety, disconnection, and fear followed me everywhere, and substances became my coping mechanism. I then entered a relationship that, in hindsight, was deeply toxic. I stayed for nearly three years. At almost eighteen-years old, I was hit by a car traveling at over forty miles per hour. I felt completely disconnected from reality, from others, and from myself. I also developed an overwhelming fear of death.

At the time, I didn’t understand it, but now I see clearly: I was living in a victimhood mentality. Therefore, finally, during my recovery, I did something I had never done before: I started listening.

I listened to podcasts about consciousness, I read books about the mind-body connection, healing, and manifestation. I became deeply curious about the relationship between thoughts, emotions, and physical reality. That curiosity changed everything.

The first time I encountered Dr. Joe Dispenza’s work was in 2022. I was living at my mom’s house, with roughly $80 in my bank account, no job, no clear direction, and no sense of identity. I remember sitting on the floor of my childhood bedroom, doing my makeup in front of the mirror, listening to a podcast where Dr. Dispenza was a guest.

He said something along the lines of: “If your thoughts can make you sick, doesn’t that mean your thoughts can also make you well?”

Something clicked. For the first time, I didn’t feel broken. I felt responsible in the most empowering way possible. I decided to go all in. For about six months, I intentionally isolated myself, not out of fear, but devotion. I read Dr. Dispenza’s books, listened to his lectures, practiced meditation daily, and began observing my thoughts, emotions, and behaviors honestly. For the first time in nearly 20 years, I felt connected—to my body, my emotions, and something greater than myself. Thus, the synchronicities began.

Within three months of consciously practicing meditation and manifestation, I received a job opportunity that allowed me to move to the heart of Budapest, I built a community of nearly 100.000 people on all of my social media platforms combined, and I began showing up as the woman I had always felt I was meant to become. Manifestation stopped feeling mystical. It became neurological, emotional, and behavioral alignment.

What I’ve learned—and what Dr. Dispenza reinforces—is that manifestation is not about wishful thinking. It’s about regulating the nervous system, changing emotional baselines, becoming familiar with elevated states (gratitude, love, coherence and such), releasing identity patterns rooted in trauma or victimhood, and acting from the future, not the past self. You cannot create a new life while emotionally rehearsing the old one every day. This is why meditation is not optional—it’s the training ground where the body learns safety in the unknown.

Attending a Dr. Joe Dispenza retreat had always felt like a “someday” dream. I remember writing in my gratitude journal how grateful I was that I would attend a retreat in 2026, until one day I stopped and asked myself: “Why 2026? Why not sooner?”

I began writing daily gratitude entries as if I were attending soon. (In the upcoming days, I ended a relationship that, although not overtly harmful, was pulling me back into old versions of myself). The next morning, a coach I followed for a while posted that she could no longer attend the Basel, Switzerland retreat between February 28th – March 1st, 2025, and was selling her ticket at a very fair price. I felt zero doubt; I knew the ticket was mine. And it was. Five days later, I was on a plane flying to Basel alone to my first manifestation retreat.

Each day started early. I arrived at the venue around 7:15 AM to secure a good spot and fully immerse myself in the experience. The official teachings usually began around 8:15 AM and continued throughout the day, alternating between lectures and meditations. The first day began in the afternoon, so it was lighter and more introductory, and there was an appr. 30 minutes meditation to close the day.

Day two is where the work truly deepened. We did two meditations, The Generous Present Moment, and the Pineal Gland Activation (a ninety-minute meditation). These two meditations created a powerful contrast: grounding us deeply into the present moment, then expanding us far beyond it. Nothing could have prepared me for what it felt like to meditate with 8,000 people in one coherent field. The energy was palpable; it was the Pineal Gland Meditation. There was one moment during this meditation that stuck with me forever. A woman suddenly began crying out loud, not in pain, but in pure joy. You could hear it in her voice that something had broken open. She had transcended something fundamental and that moment rippled through the room. One by one, people began crying in pure joy and I did too, which for me was especially profound because I hadn’t been able to cry for nearly two years, a side effect of antidepressants I had taken earlier in life. That release felt like my nervous system remembering how to feel again.

Before we entered the meditation, Dr. Dispenza carefully taught us the breathing technique designed to move cerebrospinal fluid up the spine and into the brain, activating the pineal gland. I was already familiar with the theory behind this from his book Becoming Supernatural, and I understood intellectually how powerful pineal gland activation can be.

When the meditation ended, I remember casually saying, “That was probably a bit longer than usual… maybe 40 minutes?”

I turned to the woman sitting next to me. She smiled and said, “Sweetie, that was 90 minutes.”

This was my first time ever meditating for that long. For those ninety minutes, I had lost all sense of time and space. There was no one, nothing and no time, only presence. I had entered what Dr. Dispenza often calls “the sweet spot”, the present moment: no past, no future, only connection. That meditation remains, to this day, the most profound inner experience of my life.

The last day was the most immersive and transformative one. There were four meditations in total: Tuning In With Your Heart, Reconditioning the Body to a New Mind, Changing Beliefs and Perceptions, and Blessing of the Energy Centers. By the end of it, it felt as though my nervous system had softened, my mind had quieted, and my body had finally begun to trust.

Dr. Dispenza also gave daily lectures; what made them special wasn’t just the content, but how interactive, highly engaging, and humorous they were. He constantly made sure we truly understood what he was teaching.

Roughly every 20–30 minutes, we were asked to turn to the person next to us and explain what we had just learned. Two anecdotes that stayed with me were a story of a woman who regenerated her thyroid, something once thought impossible, and a lighter, heartfelt story about his daughter manifesting an unlimited shopping spree, which beautifully illustrated how naturally manifestation works when there’s no resistance or overthinking.

For beginners, I always recommend starting with Dr. Joe Dispenza’s shorter ones, especially his Morning and Evening Meditations. Right after one wakes up, and right before they fall asleep, the brain naturally enters lower brainwave states, making it easier to relax, visualize, and stay present. For someone with health challenges, I suggest the Blessing of the Energy Centers and the Changing Boxes ones. These meditations work deeply with energy, coherence, and identity, which is where healing truly begins. For attracting a specific person into one’s life, there are the Tuning Into New Potentials and the Heart Coherence Meditations. These help shift you into the emotional state before the experience happens, which is where attraction actually takes place.

Finally, for abundance, there are specific Abundance-focused coherence meditations, and Gratitude-based ones. Abundance flows naturally when gratitude becomes your state of being.

Since Basel, my life has been unfolding in ways that feel both miraculous and natural; opportunities, relationships, inner peace, all aligning without force. And my most important realization? Manifestation isn’t about controlling life. It’s about becoming someone life can move through effortlessly. Healing comes first. Creation follows. When you regulate your nervous system, change your emotional patterns, and reconnect with your body, manifestation becomes a side effect, not a struggle.

Now I am no longer surviving. I am creating. And you can too.

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