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The Inner Well: “I Would’ve Never Thought TM Could Be So Powerful, But It Is." · The Inner Well Podcast

• The Inner Well Podcast: We all contain a space within that when enlivened and nourished will support us with unwavering stability, expansion, and peace of mind. Join us each week as we dive into honest, grounded conversations about transcendental meditation, consciousness, and growth, and what it means to live an integrated life supported by a foundation of creativity and calm. This is the Inner World. Welcome back to the inner well. My name's Megan and today I have with us one of my favorite students, Felipe Dolago. One of the reasons I have Felipe on our episode is I really think his experience with TM has been very transformative, very pivotal and in such a short amount of time. You only learned what, about three months ago? I have some feeling like that. Something like that, yeah. And so I think it's really nice for our listeners to be able to kind of get a little bit of the before and after and get a really nice gauge on timing. Now obviously everyone's experiences is gonna show up a little bit differently, but being able to really understand just how pivotal these experiences can be in such a short amount of time really gives everyone a little bit more of an opportunity to get excited about what this journey could look like. So what we've been starting all of our podcasts off with is a question about just your passions, your desires. know, what do you do? Tell us what you do in a manner that does not involve your profession, your career, what you do to make money. Tell us what you do to enjoy the human experience. ⁓ I would say a maximum minimalist. I try to make everything the best I can on a daily basis. I try to... enjoy my present moment, my friends, my daily basis without overly worrying about the future because that's something that stressed me out. That's something that makes me very anxious. So I try not to behave that way. I believe we can control our manners and our mind if we focus and exercise and build those muscles. And I choose to be in frequencies and around people that are happy and they're like aligned with my future goals. It's a good strategy, it does, it makes a difference. know, the people that you keep in your environment are gonna have a big influence on the way you see the world. And Everything that is around your environment, right? Your people, your work, your passions, your animals, the content of your TV, your music, right? All those things are part of your environment. They all touch you and they all influence you somehow. Yeah, absolutely. So now, tell us a little bit about what you do for a living. I'm a open source data analyst. I work for the Department of Defense, the federal government and big clients such as Google, Alphabet, so forth, so on. I also work for many states like state of New Mexico before, of Texas. I work with data at scale to mostly protect the public and like the consumer against abuse. In this whole realm of Data analyst, know, Felipe spends a very large amount of his time analyzing human behavior and the human experience. And a lot of what we're revolving this podcast around has everything to do with the human experience. What are the things that we can do to facilitate a much more enjoyable? a much more balanced, harmonious experience of being human and how can we optimize our quality of life so we can really find the joy in the human experience. What I'd like to talk about now is your journey. ⁓ Most everyone that comes to learn this technique usually has some kind of a catalyst. By the time they've decided, okay, I'm gonna pay for meditation. I'm gonna officially learn how to do this, even though I don't think I'm gonna be able to quiet my mind and all the misconceptions that people assume when they think of meditation. There's usually something that brought them to that breaking point or that really something that inspired them enough to take the journey. So would you mind telling our audience what that looks like for you? That is actually a very interesting story, I think. And it has to do with when one is ready to receive and when one is ready to advance and that the universe actually will push you towards things that you're supposed to do, whether you're ready or not. And that's the thing I heard about. I was probably a little boy, six, seven years old in the back of my dad's car. Howard Stern talking about how we change his life. And for, I don't know, a decade, I grew up with the awareness of TM and how it saved Howard. And throughout the years I pursue other things too. fix my issues or my behaviors or trying to understand what was going on with me. I tried different therapies, ⁓ classic psychotherapy, your talk therapy, ⁓ even with my spouse at the time we did a couple of therapies. So I'm not like somebody does not understand myself, but. How can I say this? I never did anything to learn to reprocess many feelings or many feelings or many things that happened to me as a child. So my trauma, as much as understood it and as much as I forgave the person who caused me and as much as I moved on, I actually never... re-grew a connection in my brain to try to relearn different paths of learning because PTSD in many ways will protect your brain and create mechanisms for you to relearn and I have even fragmented memory from things that happened to me. Throughout the years I tried many things until I could no longer take the stress. I could no longer take almost the mental torment because you try different things and you just go constantly find yourself depressed, almost like your brain is inflamed, you're not right, you cannot find mental clarity. And how did that experience of depression show up for you in your life, for all the things that you had a desire to do? Depression for me is built in PTSD and other components, like I lost, I had a knee replacement, so I also have a little... complicated factor from fibromyalgia and ⁓ also a tendency for addiction. I think it runs in the family as a genetic thing and that tends to lead to depression as well, right? So like those are all different components of your mental health that one is trying to manage and I've tried to do mood regulators. I've tried different antidepressives. I tried different... ⁓ legal and legal substances in that manner, like nothing seems to quite ⁓ give you the inner peace, because in my case, I had to learn how to reprocess experience, right? So I don't think any psychedelics that I experienced at least, people talk about psilocybin and other things, I've tried them. It wasn't effective for me. It didn't bring me the relief that a lot of people say, maybe a temporary relief because you're just associating and forgetting about your trauma, but on the following days, you usually getting texted and the depression is bigger on these things. And that's not the case with TM. You can practice anywhere. And the relief, and not only that, the energy is noticeable right after I came out of my first meditation, but not really just that. I would just go on with my afternoon or whatnot, feeling energized or feeling normal or whatnot. And next thing I know, there's like a feeling about something on my past or like almost I could feel like the processing of some type of emotion. And that's what I think TM is aiding me because it's correcting those small loops of thought, those connections of trauma that my brain perceived in a different way. Thank you for sharing all of that. really valuable information and it's really fascinating to hear and I'm sorry about all that you went through in your journey. And I'm glad that you found capacity to find some relief. And I think that one of the things that's so profound about this technique and I'll give my interpretation of it, we'll see if you agree and maybe you can tell me how this shows up for you. when you get to these ground states of consciousness, you know that space inside you, the unified field is what quantum mechanics refers to it to. There's a level of expansion there that happens. Your awareness is able to really expand into a space that it doesn't really have that same kind of capacity to hold out here in waking state consciousness. And just that expansion alone, being able to go inside and find an experience of you that is expanded and not contracted, especially amidst the struggle. When you come to learn this, you're in a space of deep depression, you've got a lot going on, and then to be able to settle inside and find that there's actually a part of you that doesn't feel that. That was one of the most pivotal things for me when I learned because I came for anxiety. So being able to experience a space inside me that wasn't in that contracted anxious space, just to know that it existed alone was a game changer. And so how did that first experience show up for you? The first meditation was surprisingly easy, was surprisingly ⁓ like starting the course. You don't have to believe. You just have to follow the simple procedure and the simple framework. And my mind fell into meditation. Like it was fairly easy, would say, surprisingly easy. As you continued on, so the course is a four day course, and then, you know, we let you go field tested in your life for a little while. And when we bring you back to check in that moment that you and I checked in, you told me about An experience at work where you you guys had a lot going on. Everyone was really stressed out and your boss came up to you. I did actually have my boss came in to me and like she asked me, she's like, look, we have all these updates, these workloads, short of people. And I've noticed that you're like noticeably calmer than you usually are. And not only that, I had other people coming to me and mentioning that like clearly on my behavior without, because I wasn't very open about what I doing to you. Nobody really knew, I just got compliments on my behavior in relation to that. But I would say it's also how I felt. really felt a lot of... I would say mental relief. I don't drink alcohol. I don't consume tobacco myself. I mostly feel any drug like that and I could feel how impactful TM was in relation to my mental clarity and how much energy gives me. It gives me so much energy throughout the day. I wake up at six and I have my meditation and I'm way more refreshed at six study than I was at six when I woke up. the amount of like brain restoration and rest. And that's what I think I had on my brain too from, because I also have a little bit of the anxiety as well, not only depression, but also anxiety. So I feel like my brain was getting more, like the cortisol level was diminishing. Like, so the inflammation in my brain was also decreased. It's pretty powerful. would never... have thought that is that powerful of an agent, but it is. I agree. And did you practice meditation techniques prior to coming to TM? What did you, what have you done in the past? I've done breath meditations and things that you focus. When you learned TM and since you've been practicing, do you feel like that has supported you in a way that some of these other techniques were maybe falling short of or not able to meet you where you were? A thousand percent. I would say that these other techniques, they're, for me at least, they were not closely to being effective as TM. The daily practice of TM has changed my... levels of stress, my levels of frequency, my levels of speech. I am a calmer person. Like your brain has more capacity to deal with things. It's almost like you have multitasking capabilities and you can tap to that contentment, to the happiness, right in the back of your brain. I think tapping to that contentment in the moments of stress, is what helps your brain to understand everything's gonna be okay. Almost feeling joy and the stress at the same time. That's what I would say. And I feel like that's one of the things that we even talk about on the course is that expansion of awareness ultimately enables you to hold an experience of duality, where even in the challenging moments, the contraction, the expansion doesn't collapse. And so how does this show up for you with the depression? How do you feel like that's improved as a result of this meditation? It lets you tap into that daily joy, right? It helps you to find that daily joy, especially when... ⁓ things that would normally feel overwhelming to you becomes a lot smaller because now you're also accessing joy. So they don't overwhelm you because a lot of the problem with depression is the person who cannot see the light. You cannot see a way out. It's a person who is stuck on their old ways or old manners or a person that is also resistant to change that is also a very big reason for depression a lot of times and I think TM helps processing all these things. Yes, absolutely. And so is there anything that you would like to say to our audience as it relates to this technique? You know, we've got a lot of people that come for all these things, depression, anxiety, PTSD, and you know, there's a lot of people out there that often find themselves in a challenge point because they just assume their mind's so busy, they can't quiet it. They think they need to quiet it in order to be able to practice this technique. A lot of people don't want to spend 40 minutes of their day, right? It's also a commitment. It is. a commitment to yourself, just like you commit yourself to exercise or to any other wellness practice. It's a choice. Yeah. Right? So. And I think one of the things that you've done a really good job of explaining is that even with this investment of 40 minutes, taking 40 minutes out of your day that you wouldn't have otherwise put into this technique, you're actually winding up with more time because your activity gets so much more productive, efficient, and you have more energy. Well, for me, because I have more mental clarity and more energy, ⁓ dragging to do my tasks as much. Yes. Right. I am like I have the energy and I have the joy to do what I need right there and get over with that procrastination that comes sometimes with the depression or with the test that you have to do because it's going to be hard. And as humans, we have a tendency to escape and to run away from things that are hard. Sure. You know, we're like normal, regular nature. So it gives you the edge to Processing things really and to find joy in this stress and depression of the everyday life at least for me And so would you say that joy? Because it's it's such a good word and I think it's such a coveted experience. Would you say that that's probably been the Most pivotal benefit that you've received from this technique we can say that is joy But I wouldn't quite frame is that I would say that we talk about in as adults, the importance of having emotional intelligence, right? And we put a lot of, because it's an intentional thing, we would develop our relationships and how we behave with people. We are after better relationships. And I think what TM does is gives you more emotional capacity, right? That goes right in with that emotional intelligence. And those two combined. makes so much happier of being. Like that joy is a feeling that comes from there. But like it's not really what changes, just like a product of that change, that joy. Yeah, that's very well said. I think that our ability to sustain healthy relationships depends largely on our capacity for our own self-awareness. being able to have a technique that constantly provides you with an experience of self that is grounded, that is self-sustained, that has that consistency. You're constantly showing up for yourself 20 minutes, twice a day to foster an experience of you that allows you to come out and be much more effective and efficient in your relationships and your connections with others. We always like to end our podcast with one of our favorite questions, which is, what does the inner well mean to you? I think it is expanding my capacity for emotions and stress and even the capacity for love and the resiliency that I really couldn't find anything else. I couldn't find any drug or any food. or it's just a different way of working in your mind. And furthermore, here's what I think too, it's important to a lot of people. It gives a structure, right? Like the whole thing about having a structure and a framework that we can lean on and we can trust. It's very important, because I know at least I need a structure in my life. Otherwise, if you just, ⁓ you meditate sometimes and you'll be fine. I'll probably never meditate. I have to have the framework. And that's why it's so impactful for me because it's structure. It's something I can count on. And maybe one final question. When it comes to addiction, this is another one of the reasons why a lot of people come to this technique. A lot of what we talk about in the course as it relates to how this technique has been helpful for those suffering with addiction is Being able to experience a space inside you that is content, that is full, that is not seeking or wanting for anything, you know, this paradigm that we live in with our society is very much an externally regulated paradigm. We're always reaching out and pulling in to experience fullness, but being able to actually move in and have fullness already be there. a lot of times will be enough to kind of shift that narrative and realize that fullness comes from the inside out, not the outside in, which mitigates the desire to really reach out and grab for those addictive things that help us distract us from ourselves. This type of things, they try to cloud, they tend to cloud my brain. And like, I found that I don't need them. or I wouldn't use them anymore. Just because meditation throughout the day gave me such a clear mind that I would rather be with that clear mind to work and perform than having any other substance. TM has so much data, so much, like so many different studies in many different populations. And at the end of the day, you're not dependent of any other chemical or any other thing. Once you have the technique, you can really care with you anywhere you are, right? So for me at least, that's very freeing. That freedom to have your wellness anywhere with you, it's beautiful. I do like that a lot. Yeah. The tendency to escape very much part of the human condition. And wouldn't it be great if we were able to facilitate a life where we didn't feel like we had to? I'm glad that I found 3M. It was full burnout that made me to try 3M. Please don't wait for full burnout. If you think that could help you, please go ahead. Don't waste years of your life. You can go in today and have quite a lot of living and fight depression or fight addiction today. You have very little to lose. Thanks so much for being with us, is a lovely interview. It was great seeing you again, and I'm so happy to hear that it's still showing up for you in all these amazing ways. Transcendental meditation is a scientifically validated technique that provides access to become more ourselves. Join us next week for more conversations with real people living fulfilling and peaceful lives with infinite support from their inner wealth.